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THE  WAR  AND 
EDUCATION 

By 

ANDREW  F.  WEST 


PRINCETON  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 


:^:A;?.f^ln  pt 


''By^^^^ 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 

IN  MEMORY  OF 


Louis  Knott  Koontz 


\^L^V^ 


THE  WAR  AND  EDUCATION 


ADDRESSES 


BY 

ANDREW  F.  WEST 

DKAN  OF  THE  GKADUATB  SCHOOI.,  PRINCETON   UNIVERSITT 


Together  with  a  Translation  of  the  War  Address  of 

M.  Lafferre,  Minister  of  the  French  Republic 

for  Public  Instruction  and  the  Fine  Arts 


PRINCETON  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 
PRINCETON 

LONDON :  HUMPHREY  MILFORD 
OXFORD  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 
1919 


Copyright,  1919,  by 

Princeton  Univebsity  Press 

Princeton,  N.  J. 

Published   1919 
Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


L13 


NOTE 

Four  of  the  addresses,  here  printed  with  shght 
additions,  were  previously  piibhshed  in  the  Edu- 
cational Review,  in  School  and  Society  or  in  the 
The  Evening  Post. 


838895 


PREFACE 

These  addresses  are  collected  in  the  hope  they 
may  help  to  keep  the  educational  lessons  of  the 
war  in  vivid  remembrance.  It  seems  incredible 
that  men  should  ever  forget  them.  Yet  many  will 
do  so  as  soon  as  the  storm  drifts  away.  Our 
American  schooling  has  been  weaker  on  the  side 
of  memory  than  in  some  other  directions,  so  that 
it  has  become  only  too  easy  to  forget.  If  through 
failure  to  perceive  and  remember,  we  fail  to 
embody  the  teaching  of  the  war  in  our  education, 
the  loss  to  our  nation  will  be  enormous,  because 
we  shall  lose  the  one  new  impulse  which  can  both 
save  and  strengthen  our  entire  schooling  from 
beginning  to  end.  That  new  impulse  is  the  pow- 
erful revival  of  the  belief  in  discipline  and  duty, 
as  opposed  to  all  sordid  or  sentimental  theories. 
If  it  is  forgotten  or  ignored,  our  schools  and  col- 
leges will  sink  lower. 

It  was  a  profound  truth  which  Anatole  France 
put  in  those  perfect  words  which  picture  the  little 
deserted  village  thinking  of  her  absent  sons  fight- 
ing for  France:    "lis  passent;  mats  je  reste  pour 


vi  Preface 

garde?'  leur  souvenir.  Je  suis  leur  memoire.  C'est 
pourquoi  Us  me  doivent  tout,  car  Vhomme  nest 
Vhomme  que  parce  quil  se  souvient."^ 

^  Sur  la  voie  glorieuse,  Paris,  1915^  p.  52. 


CONTENTS 

I.     In  the  War 

1.  Our  Educational  Birthright 1 

Delivered  January  29,  1918,  before  the 
Annual  Meeting  of  the  Pennsylvania 
State  Teachers'  Association  at  Johns- 
town. 

2.  The  Immortal  Conflict 19 

Delivered  July  4, 1918,  before  the  General 
Session  of  the  National  Education  Asso- 
ciation at  Pittsburgh. 

3.  France  and  The  Classics 35 

Delivered  July  12,  1918,  by  M.  LaFerre, 
Minister  of  Public  Instruction  and  the 
Fine  Arts  at  the  University  of  Mont- 
pellier. 

II.    The  Close  of  the  War 

4.  The  Humanities  After  the  War 49 

Delivered  December  5,  1918,  before  the 
Association  of  American  Universities 
and  the  British  Educational  Mission  at 
Harvard  University. 


viii  Contents 

5.  Vocational  and  General  Education 73 

Delivered  January  16,  1919,  at  the  An- 
nual Meeting  of  the  Vocational  Associa- 
tion of  the  Middle  West  at  Chicago. 


OUR  EDUCATIONAL  BIRTHRIGHT 


OUR  EDUCATIONAL  BIRTHRIGHT 

While  we  are  here  to-day,  thinking  and  talking 
of  education,  perhaps  we  are  only  half  aware  how 
nearly,  in  the  vast  world  outside,  the  best  things 
of  civihzation,  the  dearest  hopes  of  mankind,  are 
face  to  face  with  the  deadly  peril  of  quick  and 
overwhelming  disaster.  And  that  disaster,  if  ac- 
complished, puts  back  the  clock  a  thousand  years. 
In  the  whirl  of  that  cataclysm  JNIagna  Charta  and 
the  Declaration  of  Independence  would  be  blown 
away  as  merely  two  more  "scraps  of  paper." 

In  this  crisis,  it  is  no  time,  either  in  the  great 
outer  world  of  war  or  in  the  lesser  and  inner  for- 
mative world  of  educational  preparation  for  Ufe, 
for  any  wild  theorizing,  any  panic-stricken 
clutching  at  this  or  that  novelty,  makeshift  or 
panacea  to  help  us,  or  for  confused  and  unsteady 
thinking  of  any  sort.  It  is  the  time  for  steady 
vision,  straight  thinking,  search  for  the  really 
durable  things,  deep  deliberation,  and  then,  as 
soon  as  we  see  the  truth  in  new  clearness,  for  a 
prompt,  vigorous  and  universal  obedience  to  it 
in  action.  For  only  those  who  are  willing  to  be 
ruled  by  the  actual,  living,  indestructible  truth 

3 


4  The  War  and  Education 

can  ever  be  made  fit  to  be  free  or  to  be  of  real 
use  in  this  or  any  other  time  of  the  world's  need. 

The  war  is  changing  much  and  changing  it  rap- 
idly. We  are  being  hurried  along.  Whither?  Al- 
ready we  are  aware  that  we  are  in  a  new  age. 
The  End  of  the  World  happened  over  three 
years  ago.  A  New  World  is  here.  A  Judgment 
of  the  Nations  has  begun.  The  supposedly  edu- 
cated man  who  does  not  know  this  is  mentally 
and  morally  defective.  So  far  as  he  has  influ- 
ence he  does  harm.  He  belongs  with  the  "sub- 
normals." 

What  are  the  things  we  can  already  see  are 
changing?  and  into  what  are  they  changing? 
What  are  the  things,  if  any,  that  are  not  chang- 
ing? These  are  the  three  momentous  questions 
we  must  know  how  to  answer  if  we  are  to  be  fit 
for  our  present  dutj^  as  civilized  men,  especially 
if  we  are  to  be  fit  to  take  part  in  guiding  the  edu- 
cation of  our  youth  so  that  they  may  be  ready 
for  their  part  when  the  load  falls  on  their  should- 
ers. This,  it  seems  to  me,  is  now  the  one  supreme 
duty  of  all  who  care  that  our  education  shall  be  of 
help  to  our  land  in  this  time  of  fierce  trial,  soon 
to  grow  fiercer,  and  in  the  happier  days  we  hope 
to  see  when  the  storm  has  passed.    Here  is  "our 


Our  Educational  Birthright  5 

bit,"  and  a  big  "bit"  to  do,  and  to  do  now  in  the 
cause  of  national  preparedness.  The  new  army 
of  the  young  recruits  of  knowledge,  few  of  them 
now  well-trained,  some  half-trained,  most  of  them 
untrained,  must  be  all  trained  and  well-trained — 
and  without  more  ado  or  dela5\  Are  we  ready 
for  this?  Do  we  see  the  truth,  the  whole  truth, 
and  nothing  but  the  truth?  see  it  clearly?  see  it 
soon  enough  ?  and  see  it  together  ?  If  not,  we  shall 
deserve  to  be  cursed.  But  if  we  do,  we  may  give 
quick  and  powerful  help  at  a  time  when  such 
help,  though  late,  is  still  in  time  to  save. 

What  are  the  things  that  are  changing?  O  so 
many  of  them !  and  changing  so  fast !  None  of  us 
can  see  them  all  now.  Perhaps  none  of  us  can 
ever  see  them  all.  But  with  the  fourth  year  of 
the  war  on,  and  its  end  not  yet  in  sight,  there 
has  been  time  to  see  the  chief  lines  and  directions 
of  the  changes  which  are  still  shaping  themselves 
before  our  eyes.  Let  us  look  at  those  which  affect 
or  ought  to  affect  our  education  most  powerfully. 

The  first  is  a  change  in  our  attitude,  a  new 
aversion  to  self-indulgence,  indifference,  idleness, 
caprice  and  pleasure.  We  had  been  drifting  too 
long  amidst  these  things,  like  beings  with  juven- 
ile minds  in  adult  bodies. 


6  The  War  and  Education 

Behold  the  child!  by  nature's  kindly  law 
Pleased  with  a  feather,  tickled  with  a  straw. 

"Nature's  law" — for  infants,  but  not  for  men. 
All  Americans  of  intelligence  who  love  their 
country  more  than  their  own  ease,  many  of  whom 
had  been  easy-going  or  inert  before,  are  awake 
now.  They  see,  in  truer  light,  that  these  things 
are  enemies  of  our  land.  We  can  stand  outer  as- 
sault, but  not  the  inner  softness  of  decay.  The 
only  question  remaining  is :  Will  they  act  now  on 
what  they  see?  If  so,  a  great  and  lasting  change 
for  good  in  our  education  is  assured.  The  idler, 
the  slacker,  the  sloucher,  the  careless,  the  listless, 
the  reckless,  those  who  have  been  trooping  in 
multitudes  along  the  "line  of  least  resistance" 
away  from  irksome  duty,  scattering  among  the 
various  primrose  paths  on  the  way  down-hill,  will 
then  halt  and  stand  erect  once  more,  hstening  for 
the  call  that  shall  tell  them  where  they  ought  to 
go.  "Do  what  you  like"  and  "do  what  you 
please,"  in  studies  as  in  conduct,  will  then  be  dis- 
carded as  a  Devil's  motto.  How  this  will  hit  the 
officers  and  leaders  of  education  who  have  en- 
couraged the  weaker  instincts  of  the  ignorant, 
have  played  the  politician,  have  thought  more  of 
their  jobs  than  of  their  duty,  and  have  commer- 


Our  Educational  Birthnght  7 

cialized  and  sold  like  trafRckers  the  sacred  things 
of  truth!  It  is  time  to  drive  the  moneychangers 
from  the  Temple  of  Knowledge.  Whenever  par- 
ents really  want  this  done,  it  will  be  done.  And 
the  sooner  the  better. 

The  second  change  is  a  slowly  forming  change 
of  positive  purpose.  The  first  change  of  aversion 
to  the  weaker  tendencies  of  immature  minds,  old 
or  young,  is  wholly  good,  but  being  primarily  a 
negative  reaction,  is  not  enough  to  build  on. 
Something  more  is  needed,  and  something  more 
is  beginning  to  happen.  When  we  turn  away 
from  the  things  that  harm,  it  is  of  course  the  first 
needed  step.  As  Horace  wrote  long  ago  of  Vir- 
tue: "The  first  step  is  to  avoid  Vice."  But  only 
the  first  step.  The  second  step,  without  which 
the  first  step  leads  us  nowhere  and  may  leave  us 
ready  to  turn  back  the  wrong  way  again,  is  to 
start  toward  and  keep  on  toward  the  things  that 
help  and  strengthen.  The  first  means  "About 
face!";  the  second  means  "Foi*ward  march!" 
We  are  taking  the  first  step — facing  right — in 
greater  numbers  every  day  and  month.  Can  we 
take  the  second?  If  so,  we  shall  win — win  in 
making  our  boys  and  girls  into  the  finest  men 
and  women,  fit  for  our  country's  need.    If  not, 


8  The  War  and  Education 

we  shall  fail,  and  fail  not  only  in  the  time  of 
greatest  danger,  but  of  the  greatest  opportunity 
this  generation  shall  ever  have.  It  is  hard,  no 
doubt — and  yet  supremely  well  worth  doing. 
And  to  real  men  and  women  difficulty  is  merely 
another  name  for  opportunity.  If  we  are  real 
men  and  women,  we  shall  go  straight  ahead  on 
this  path,  no  matter  what  lions  stand  in  the  way. 
It  would  be  interesting,  if  time  allowed,  to  name 
some  of  the  lions.  Some  of  them  are  outside  us. 
We  need  not  fear  these.  Some,  strangely 
enough,  are  inside — the  most  dangerous  of  all. 
They  must  be  tamed  or  killed. 

What  is  the  newly  wakened  positive  impulse 
which  shows  us  that  this  second  step  is  the  great 
step  to  take?  and  that,  as  we  go  on,  we  shall  al- 
waj^s  be  surely  on  the  right  road?  For  this  is  the 
whole  matter.  Settle  this,  and  questions  of  stud- 
ies will  settle  themselves.  It  is  not  so  much: 
How  far  are  we  going?  or  How  fast  are  we  go- 
ing? but  On  what  road  are  we  going?  How  true 
the  great  word  of  Descartes  on  education  now 
appears : 

It  is  better  to  go  a  short  distance  on  the  right  road, 
than  a  long  distance  on  the  wrong  road. 

Let  us  go  as  far  as  we  can,  of  course.    But  let 


Our  Educational  Birthright  9 

all  who  are  in  any  way  discouraged  by  their  lack 
of  travelling  strength  take  heart  if  they  are  really 
going,  even  slowlj^  even  with  stumbling,  even 
for  only  a  short  distance — yet  on  the  right  road. 
How  I  wish  every  boy  and  girl  in  Pennsylvania 
and  outside  might  pluck  up  courage  at  this 
thought.  Initium  dimidium  facti — "the  begin- 
ning is  half  of  the  whole,"  "well  begun,  half 
done" — and  the  harder  half  too;  these  are  the 
ever-old,  ever-new  words  of  cheer  and  good  sense 
for  the  weakest  boy  or  girl  in  school  who  at  least 
wants  to  go  right. 

Again  we  ask:  What  is  the  newh^  wakened 
positive  impulse  which  is  the  basis  for  all  our  new 
educational  hopes?  It  is  the  revival  in  might  of 
the  ideas  of  discipline  and  duty,  the  growing 
conviction  that  education  is  not  the  strolling  here 
and  there  of  multitudes  of  stragglers,  but  the 
orderly  advance  of  great  armies  to  a  known  ob- 
jective. Have  we  not  seen  it  beginning?  almost 
as  soon  as  the  first  bugles  blew? — as  our  sons 
rose  up  to  judge  us,  standing  erect  and  enduring 
sharp  discipline,  all  over  the  land — offering  their 
young  strength  and  lives  to  save  us — bravely, 
gaily,  gloriously.  Have  we  not  seen  it  as  our 
daughters  turned  in  myriads  to  "stand  and  wait" 


10  The  War  and  Education 

in  the  hospitals  and  prepared  to  carry  their 
self-effacing  heroism  to  tend  oiu-  sons  in  the 
battle-lines?  Have  we  not  seen  it  in  the  self- 
imposed  discipline  now  spreading  all  over  the 
land?  saving  food  and  clothing  and  all  necessary- 
things,  giving  up  all  we  can  in  time  and  work 
and  money,  doing  it  steadily  and  gladly,  and  all 
on  one  combined  exacting  plan.  We  are  coming 
together  at  last.  E  plufibus  unum  again  rings 
true. 

It  is  the  old  American  spirit  at  last  awakening 
again,  the  spirit  which  made  and  saved  our  free- 
dom— never,  please  God,  again  to  go  to  sleep. 
Obedience,  not  to  what  we  like  or  do  not  like  to 
do,  but  to  what  we  ought  to  do,  be  it  hard  or 
easy,  this  is  what  is  now  awaking  in  full  might. 
If  we  heed  it,  it  will  purify,  unify  and  invigorate 
our  schools  for  generations  to  come.  It  will  give 
us  the  power  to  base  all  our  education  on  the  one 
indestructible  truth  on  which  alone  education  can 
be  built.  So  great  is  the  opportunity  our  present 
difficulty  brings  us.    Can  we  take  it? 

Yes,  these  changes,  if  they  spread  far  enough 
and  go  deep  enough,  will,  of  course,  bring  many 
other  changes  in  their  train.  They  will  compel 
us  to  restudy  our  schools  and  colleges.     In  our 


Our  Educational  Birthnght  11 

theory  of  studies,  as  well  as  of  life,  we  shall  have 
to  abandon,  once  for  all,  many  specious  theories 
and  alluring  practices  to  wliich  we  have  recently 
been  indulgent.  The  captivating  notion,  happily 
now  going  out  of  vogue,  that  the  student  in 
school  or  college  should  study  what  he  likes,  when 
he  likes,  as  he  likes,  if  he  likes,  must  be  "interned 
or  interred."  To  all  so-called  "free  elective  sys- 
tems," which  are  not  systems  at  all,  we  must 
promptly  say  "good-bye"  and  "good  riddance." 
In  place  of  all  this  must  come  the  conviction  that 
so  far  as  practicable  in  view  of  each  student's  age, 
capacities  and  future  life-work,  the  few  funda- 
mentals of  universal  value  for  training — not  for 
tickling — the  human  mind  should  be  the  basis  for 
all  courses  of  study  until  the  student  is  both  suffi- 
ciently trained  in  power  and  is  also  made  aware 
of  his  ascertained  aptitudes.  Then  he  should  be 
left  to  choose  for  himself.  In  this  way,  as  in  no 
other,  may  our  youth  be  advanced  at  least  a  suffi- 
cient distance  on  the  right  road  to  make  it  their 
own  sole  responsibility,  and  not  ours,  if  they 
then  choose  to  go  a  long  way,  a  short  way, 
or  any  way  on  any  wrong  road.  This  also  means 
that  if  schools  and  colleges  do  not  know  enough 
to  come  to  a  fair  agreement  on  the  fundamental 


12  The  War  and  Education 

studies  (no  room  for  politics  here!  inside  or  out) 
and  to  distribute  them  so  that  no  essential  is  lost 
in  any  curriculum,  meanwhile  giving  everything 
its  true  label — thus  making  every  course  of  study 
sound  in  itself  as  well  as  easily  recognizable,  and 
all  of  them  together,  from  bottom  to  top  in  every 
kind  of  education,  standing  for  the  harmonious 
unity  in  variety  of  the  knowledge  most  valuable 
for  training  and  informing  the  human  mind — if 
they  can  not  effect  this  with  a  fair  amount  of 
clearness,  they  can  not  make  their  case  clear  to 
the  country,  and  will  give  evidence  that  they  do 
not  know  their  own  business.  And  in  arranging 
studies  it  must  never  be  forgotten  that  to  put 
intellectually  inferior  or  loosely  disjointed  forms 
of  education  on  a  par  in  competition  with  the 
nobler  forms  is  to  drive  out  the  best  education. 
Such  a  course  will  reduce  our  land  in  this  respect 
to  a  condition  of  dependent  provincial  mediocrity, 
by  cutting  off  from  the  boys  and  girls  of  imusual 
promise  a  good  chance  to  proceed — not  a  little 
way,  nor  half  way,  but  all  the  way  on  the  right 
road.  A  democracy  without  this  chance  well 
safeguarded  and  cherished  is  not  a  true  democ- 
racy in  education.  This  is  the  heart  of  the  mat- 
ter.   Can  we  give  our  education  vital  unity  and 


Ou7'  Educational  Birthright  13 

thereby  gain  immensely  increased  power  for  the 
cause  of  knowledge,  truth,  justice  and  the  best 
things  of  human  hfe?  Not  without  clear  agree- 
ment, not  without  the  cooperation  which  springs 
from  the  unifying  impulse  of  discipline  and  duty, 
not  without  the  power  to  overcome  chaotic  dis- 
integration by  a  definite  organization  in  which  the 
individual  will  be  willing  to  sacrifice  or  postpone 
some  of  his  immature  inclinations,  harmless  or 
perhaps  even  useful  to  him  if  he  were  the  only  one 
to  consider,  for  the  sake  of  the  lasting  good  he 
will  gain  by  common  training  in  the  essentials  of 
knowledge.  We  do  not  need  more  studies,  but 
fewer  studies  and  more  study.  This  is  the  one 
way  to  be  thorough  in  our  intellectual  "prepared- 
ness." What  we  need  is  simplicity  rather  than 
a  miscellany;  the  sustaining  diet  of  the  home 
table,  rather  than  the  confusing  variety  of  the 
whole  market;  the  things  of  central  value  first, 
and  such  of  the  rest  as  we  like — afterwards. 

This  means  a  lot  of  work  to  do — a  great  house 
cleaning  in  which  loads  and  loads  of  trash  shall 
be  swept  out  and  carted  away  as  junk.  For  most 
of  our  people  it  means  we  must  provide  genuine, 
not  foolish,  vocational  training,  together  with  and 
not  apart  from  real  elementary  schooling.    The 


14  The  War  and  Education 

secondary  education  in  our  high  schools  and  acad- 
emies should  begin  two  years  earlier.  Here,  at 
the  present  time,  is  the  place  of  greatest  waste. 
We  are  the  only  important  western  nation  with 
so  short  a  period  as  four  years  for  this  stage  of 
instruction.  Make  it  six,  and  the  good  results  will 
be  doubled.  That  is,  they  will  be  doubled  if  the 
programmes  are  organized,  in  a  very  few  types, 
on  the  basis  of  training  the  mind  in  essentials, 
rather  than  in  the  loose  and  confusing  way  which 
is  still  so  common.  And  all  loose,  vague  and 
shifting  plans  of  college  studies  must  "go."  It 
also  means  that  good  teaching  is  something  more 
than  talking.  Never  mind  what  some  of  the 
psychologists  tell  us  about  "interest"  and  the  ab- 
surdity of  "formal  discipline."  Intellectual  dis- 
cipline, if  worth  anything  at  all,  can  not  be  "in- 
formal" or  casual  or  happy-go-lucky.  However, 
if  we  are  awake  to  the  meaning  of  the  war,  we 
need  not  worry  much  about  "formal"  discipline. 
It  will  take  care  of  itself  and  discipline  its  critics 
too.  And  if  we  are  not  awake,  nothing  can  save 
us.  History  will  then  prepare  to  write  our  epi- 
taph among  those  who  failed — failed  to  take  their 
one  great  chance. 


Our  Educational  BirthrigJit  15 

The  tide  in  the  affairs  of  men 

Which,  taken  at  the  flood,  leads  on  to  fortune. 

The  tide  is  flooding  fast  to-day. 

I  have  tried  to  show  sharply,  first,  what  things 
are  changing  among  us  and,  second,  into  what 
they  are  changing.  Lastly,  then,  what  things,  if 
any,  are  not  changing?  Are  there  any?  Yes. 
The  laws  of  nature  still  hold  sway.  The  law  of 
gravitation  is  good  for  some  time  to  come  and  so 
far  as  man  can  see,  for  all  time  to  come.  The 
tides  still  swing.  The  seasons  pass  in  their  an- 
cient order.  "Day  imto  day,  night  unto  night" 
— follow  on  the  same  as  ever.  The  sun  sets,  the 
dews  fall,  the  stars  shine.  The  animals  seem 
much  the  same.  The  bee  still  fills  its  honey-cup, 
the  lark  has  not  lost  her  song,  the  leopard  keeps 
his  spots.  It  is  we,  not  they,  who  are  seen  to  be 
changing — changing  in  our  recent  attitude  and 
purpose.  Otherwise,  we  too,  though  no  doubt  de- 
veloping, remain  of  the  same  nature  as  we  were; 
human  in  our  good  and  evil,  naturally  doing  now 
right  and  now  wrong,  ever  rising  or  falling  as  we 
follow  or  fail  to  follow  the  best  light  we  have — 
the  light  of  truth,  which  alone  shows  the  way  to 
freedom.  Truth  is  still  at  heart  simple,  clear, 
convincing,  and  error  is  still  at  heart  tortuous. 


16  The  War  and  Education 

malign,  confusing.  A  lie  is  still  mean.  Treach- 
ery is  still  base.  Lust  and  cruelty,  the  twin  vices, 
are  still  detestable.  Wisdom  is  still  "better  than 
riches"  or  pleasure  or  station  or  fame.  Its  price 
is  still  "above  rubies"  and  all  the  lesser  values  of 
hfe.  These  are  things  that  do  not  and  can  not 
change,  or  be  disbelieved,  unless  moral  chaos  is  to 
follow. 

What  else  does  not  change?  The  law  of  the 
mind.  To  know  truth  and  especially  the  truths 
that  underlie  all  knowledge  and  form  the  base 
for  all  sound  opinion,  to  express  that  knowledge 
well,  and  to  use  all  with  wisdom  in  the  guidance 
of  life — these  are  still  the  marks  of  the  best  in- 
tellectual excellence.  Experience  alone  still  con- 
vincingly reveals  the  relative  worth  of  studies. 
Follow  it.  Is  reason  worth  having?  Is  memory 
worth  having?  Are  the  treasures  of  knowledge 
worth  having?  Is  a  well-trained  mind  worth  hav- 
ing? Then  train  it  well  and  use  it  in  full  power. 
Is  the  newly  wakened  conviction  of  discipline  and 
duty  one  we  are  willing  to  follow?  Then  believe 
it,  believe  it  and  follow  it — no  matter  how  hard 
the  effort,  no  matter  if  we  get  on  only  a  short 
way  at  first,  at  least  satisfied  to  find  our  feet  are 
on  the  right  road.    The  going  will  be  better  soon. 


Our  Educational  Birthright  17 

Here  is  where  faith  and  knowledge  join — faith 
leading  the  way.  The  light  may  be  dim  and  dis- 
tant now — but  it  will  brighten  as  we  go  on.  No 
doubt  it  is  a  day  of  trouble  and  alarm,  Der  Tag 
indeed,  but  not  the  Day  the  atheist  cynics  feign. 
It  is  a  "great  and  notable  Day  of  the  Lord,"  in 
whose  sight  are  all  days  and  ages.  We  do  not 
know  its  inmost  meaning.  If  we  knew  it  all,  we 
should  be  more  than  men.  But  we  know  enough 
to  help  us  to  believe  more  than  we  know,  and  thus 
at  least  to  do  what  we  believe  to  be  our  part. 
Who  of  us  can  fail  now  to  learn  our  lesson?  It 
is  time,  high  time,  to  reahze  in  matters  of  edu- 
cation the  stern  responsibihty  that  rests  on  us 
for  what  our  students  study,  how  they  study  and 
why  they  study,  to  substitute  the  disciplined  for 
the  undisciplined  mind,  the  trained  for  the  un- 
trained, self-sacrifice  for  self-indulgence,  so  that 
all  for  whom  we  must  give  account  shall  be  well 
prepared  to  play  their  part.  The  law  of  the  mind, 
like  the  moral  law,  is  the  true  glory  of  man.  For 
a  man  to  obey  that  law  is  to  earn  his  freedom  and 
to  help  save  the  freedom  of  the  world.  This  is 
something  higher  than  all  "practical  efficiency." 
In  it  alone  is  the  guiding  wisdom  which  must  con- 
trol and  purify  everything,  "efficiency"  included, 


18  The  War  and  Education 

the  one  force  that  can  win  a  lasting  victory  for 
truth  and  freedom. 

Three  roots  hold  up  Dominion ; — 
Knowledge,  Power.    These  twain  are  strong, 
But  stronger  still  the  third — Obedience. 
'Tis  the  tap-root  still, 

Wrapped  round  the  rock  of  Duty  far  below, 
That  bids  defy  to  all  the  winds  that  blow. 


THE  IMMORTAL  CONFLICT 


THE  IMMORTAL  CONFLICT 

I 

A  boy  without  a  memory  can  not  be  educated. 
A  man  without  a  memory  needs  some  one  to  look 
after  him,  or  he  will  go  on  repeating  his  mistakes, 
because  he  is  always  forgetting  what  he  needs  to 
remember,  namely,  that  it  is  not  the  man  who 
makes  a  mistake,  but  the  man  who  repeats  his 
mistakes,  who  is  known  for  a  fool.  And  a  nation 
without  a  memory  is  in  the  same  deplorable 
plight.  To  remember  well  the  things  that  ought 
to  be  remembered  and  to  profit  by  them  is  the  rule 
for  a  safe,  strong  and  wise  life  for  every  man  and 
for  every  nation. 

The  past  is  not  something  dead  and  gone. 
Whether  men  care  to  have  anything  to  do  with  it 
or  not,  it  remains  a  fact  that  the  past  has  a  great 
deal  to  do  with  us.  Our  parents  and  our  parents' 
parents  may  be  physically  dead  and  gone;  but 
without  them  we  would  not  have  been  what  we  are 
and,  indeed,  would  not  be  here  today.  Whatever 
has  happened  is  a  fact  as  inevitable  as  what  now 
happens  or  as  what  will  happen.    The  past  is  the 

£1 


22  The  War  and  Education 

parent,  the  producing  cause  of  the  present.  Sci- 
ence has  taught  us  by  a  thousand  proofs  that  the 
universe  is  what  it  is  because  of  what  it  was  and 
that  men  are  what  they  are  now  because  of  what 
men  were  before.  And  the  big  book  of  history, 
which  is  the  world's  memory,  points  the  one 
"moral  of  all  human  tales"  in  revealing  the  truth 
that,  no  matter  what  else  has  changed,  the  human 
heart  is  still  swayed  by  the  same  passions  as  ever. 
To  learn  well  this  lesson  and  never  to  forget  it  in 
the  conduct  of  life,  personal  and  national,  is  the 
one  foundation  for  a  sane  education. 

And  now,  when  the  world  seems  turned  up- 
side down,  men  need  to  remember  these  elemen- 
tary and  elemental  unchanging  realities.  For 
there  are  voices  of  confusion  telling  us  that  every- 
thing is  changing,  saying  that  little,  if  anything, 
of  what  we  have  held  as  true  can  be  depended  on 
for  the  future,  and  bidding  us  clutch  at  this  or 
that  panacea  as  the  only  thing  to  cure  our  ills. 
The  past,  they  say,  has  httle  to  teach  us ;  for  we 
are  Americans  of  the  twentieth  century  and 
should  promptly  cut  loose  from  bygone  times, 
methods  and  ideas  and  set  up  a  brand-new  nation- 
al culture  of  our  own.  In  their  rejection  of  what 
they  call  "tradition,"  they  are  forgetting  some- 


The  Immortal  Conflict  23 

thing;  they  are  forgetting  that  the  value  of  any- 
thing does  not  depend  on  whether  it  is  old  or  new, 
but  on  whether  it  is  trivial  or  important  and  on 
whether  it  is  false  or  true. 

They  are  proposing  to  run  American  educa- 
tion, not  on  a  record,  but  on  a  prospectus.  They 
are,  in  fact,  telling  us  to  lose  our  memories  and  to 
forget  what  we  shall  forget  at  our  peril,  namely, 
that  the  past  has  our  main  lesson  to  teach  us  and 
that  the  man  who  does  not  see  behind  the  lurid, 
blinding  light  of  this  world-war  its  deep-lying 
causes  for  decades  and  generations  past,  and  on 
back  to  the  origins,  can  not  understand  why  this 
war  happened,  nor  how  to  prevent  its  happening 
again,  nor  even  what  it  is  that  is  now  happening. 
For  he  who  does  not  remember  what  has  gone 
before  has  little  means  of  judging  what  is  hap- 
pening now  or  of  forecasting  what  will  come 
after.  It  is  no  time  to  forget.  It  is  the  time 
to  remember  everything  and  to  forget  nothing. 

II 

Listen  to  a  voice  from  long  ago;  yet  so  clear 
and  near  in  its  tones,  it  seems  to  be  speaking  now. 
"There  is,  we  affirm,"  says  Plato,  "an  immortal 
conflict  now  going  on,  and  calling  for  marvellous 


24  The  War  and  Education 

vigilance.  In  it  our  allies  are  the  gods  and  all 
good  spirits."  He  is  speaking  of  the  age-long 
conflict  of  truth  and  error.  It  is  a  clarion  call 
of  ancient  freedom  across  the  centuries  to  us,  not 
only  to  the  battle  line  in  France,  but  to  the  armies 
of  education  in  America.  Listen  to  its  echoes 
and  you  shall  hear  the  story  of  Marathon  and 
Salamis,  of  Leonidas  at  Thermopylae,  of  Hora- 
tius  at  the  bridge,  of  Magna  Charta,  of  the  des- 
perate siege  of  Leyden,  of  Cromwell's  Ironsides, 
of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  and  of  the 
glorious  defence  of  Verdun.  Listen  and  you 
shall  hear  Lincoln's  answering  voice:  "The  fiery 
trial  through  which  we  pass  will  light  us  down, 
in  honor  or  dishonor,  to  the  latest  generation. 
We  shall  nobly  save  or  meanly  lose  the  last,  best 
hope  of  earth." 

Let  us  listen  again  in  the  quiet  of  our  schools 
and  we  shall  hear  the  echoing  thunders  of  the 
long- fought  war,  not  ended  yet,  between  the  free- 
dom of  knowledge  and  the  debasing  slavery  of 
ignorance.  And  that  warfare  is  the  one  business 
of  education,  the  one  reason  why  we  need  schools 
at  all.  What  is  the  past  for  us  ?  It  is  Experience 
teaching — and  teaching  now.  You  recall  the 
scene  at  the  end  of  Goethe's  Faust,  where  Faust 


The  Immortal  Conflict  25 

exclaims  of  the  fleeting  moment  of  his  achieve- 
ment— "  'Tis  past."  Do  you  also  recall  who  it 
was  said  in  reply: 

"  'Tis  past?  a  foolish  word! 
That  is  to  say 
As  it  had  never  been." 

It  was  the  Devil. 

So  our  struggle  in  the  schools,  as  it  should  be 
in  our  homes,  is  against  ignorance,  the  old,  an- 
cient, inveterate  ignorance  with  which  everj'^ 
generation  is  born  into  this  world,  the  ignorance 
which  must  be  first  overcome  and  then  enlight- 
ened by  effort,  hard  effort,  repeated  effort,  wisely 
guided  effort,  not  alone  by  the  exertion  of  the 
teacher,  but  on  the  part  of  the  student  as  well, 
that  our  young  recruits  may  be  trained,  trained, 
trained  into  an  alert,  disciplined,  irresistible  army 
of  knowledge. 

It  is  not  an  easy  task,  for  we  are  wrestling  not 
against  flesh  and  blood,  but  against  the  unseen 
powers  of  darkness,  darkness  intellectual  and 
darkness  moral.  It  is,  then,  our  part  in  the  "im- 
mortal conflict,"  ceaseless  and  strenuous,  "now 
going  on  and  calling  for  marvelous  vigilance" 
more  loudly  than  ever.  It  is  no  place  for  imdis- 
ciplined  minds  or  wild  theorists,  still  less  for 


26  The  War  and  Education 

idlers,  slouchers  and  slackers,  and  even  less  for 
false  prophets  dressed  up  in  the  uniform  of  the 
army  of  knowledge. 

Ill 

What  is  the  way  to  win?  This  is  the  question 
that  must  be  answered  rightly  if  we  are  to  keep 
faith  with  our  country.  There  is  just  one  way. 
It  is  to  make  the  proved  truths  of  experience  the 
one  basis  for  our  efforts  and  the  one  test  of  all 
theories  offered  for  our  acceptance.  It  it  the 
test  of  common  sense.  It  is  also  the  one  scien- 
tific test,  for  science,  as  Huxley  put  it,  is  nothing 
else  than  "highly  trained  common  sense"  apphed 
to  scientific  questions.  Let  us  try  by  this  test 
some  of  the  plausible  assertions  which  are  being 
made. 

1.  One  is  that  there  should  be  no  "formal  disci- 
pline" in  studies.  If  this  means  that  there  should 
be  no  strict  and  regular  training  of  the  human 
mind,  as  the  words  naturally  imply,  the  test  is 
easily  made.  If  it  means  something  else,  we  have 
no  need  to  consider  it.  All  we  need  to  do  is  to  re- 
member the  record  of  facts.  This  record  tells  us 
that  in  the  world's  contests  the  undisciplined  mind 
has  generally  been  beaten. 


The  Immortal  Conflict  27 

It  has  been  one  of  the  outstanding  lessons  of 
the  war,  notably  so  in  the  defense  of  Verdun.  It 
is  notable  to-day  all  over  our  land  in  the  newly- 
wakened  spirit  of  discipline,  of  unquestioning 
obedience  to  duty,  both  in  military  training  and 
in  civil  life.  Why?  In  order  to  win — so  that 
freedom  may  not  perish  from  the  earth.  So  we 
may  trust  the  war  to  refute  the  critics  of  "formal 
discipline"  and  to  discipline  them  too. 

2.  Another  assertion  is  that  no  student  should 
be  required  to  take  any  study  which  is  not  "in- 
teresting" to  him,  because  if  he  does  not  like  it, 
he  will  get  little  good  from  it.  It  is  hard  to  take 
this  seriously.  What  in  the  world  is  to  be  done, 
on  this  basis,  with  the  many  who  find  all  studies 
and  especially  all  study  uninteresting?  This  be- 
guiling half-truth  breaks  on  the  hard  rocks  of 
facts.  For  it  is  not  a  matter  of  guess  or  supposi- 
tion, but  of  fact,  that  many  things  we  have  to  do 
and  know  we  ought  to  do  are  not  pleasant  in 
themselves.  It  is  not  "interesting"  to  do  drudg- 
ery or  to  bear  hunger  or  to  keep  the  night-watch, 
chilled  to  the  bone,  in  the  battle-trenches.  Duty 
is  not  always  "interesting,"  but  it  is  always  duty. 
Life  is  not  a  series  of  pleasant  elective  choices,  but 


28  The  War  and  Education 

has  in  it  the  element  of  stem  compulsion,  and 
most  of  all 

When  Duty  whispers  low,  Thou  must, 

And  it  is  another  fact,  not  fancy,  that  obedience 
to  duty,  however  hard  and  distasteful  at  first, 
yields  a  most  "interesting"  joy  of  human  life,  the 
joy  of  the  hard- won  fight,  and  leads  to  the  high- 
est freedom,  the  freedom  of  assured  self-con- 
quest. Is  there  an}i;hing  our  country  needs 
more? 

3.  Some  are  telling  us  that  vocational  and  tech- 
nical education  is  the  one  thing  needful,  because 
every  one  should  be  taught  to  earn  his  living.  So 
he  should.  And  nine-tenths  of  our  youth  must 
begin  to  earn  their  living  early.  We  grant  it. 
But  this  utilitarian  proposal  errs  in  forgetting 
some  hard  facts.  For  if  this  is  practically  all 
our  youth  are  to  have,  then  most  of  them  are  con- 
demned in  advance  to  a  form  of  industrial  slav- 
ery, because  they  would  thus  be  trained  to  be 
little  more  than  animate  tools  for  special  tasks 
and  would  be  largely  cut  off  from  their  just 
chance  to  rise.  This  view  overlooks  the  fact  they 
are  more  than  animate  tools.  They  are  human 
beings,  our  brothers  and  sisters,  with  minds  and 


The  Immortal  Conflict  29 

hearts  as  well  as  hands.  If  in  our  just  desire  to 
prepare  them  for  making  their  living  we  also 
unjustly  fail  to  prepare  them  by  good  general 
schoohng  to  make  their  lives  better  worth  living, 
we  shall  create  a  huge  proletariat  of  discontent 
to  curse  us,  a  grave  menace  to  themselves  and  to 
the  safety  of  our  democracy. 

4.  One  more  theory  needs  notice.  It  is  that  we 
are  an  independent  nation  living  in  the  twentieth 
century  and  should  therefore  have  a  purely 
American  national  education  without  reference  to 
the  past.  I  know  no  loyal  American  who  wants 
anything  else  than  that  our  national  history 
should  be  well  studied  by  every  boy  and  girl  in 
the  land  and  that  EngHsh  shall  be  the  only  lan- 
guage used  in  our  elementary  schools.  Is  this  all 
there  is  in  the  proposal?  Then  we  can  all  ac- 
cept it  with  enthusiasm.  But  it  needs  definition. 
For  we  have  the  right  to  ask  whether  it  is  meant 
that  all  elementary  studies  are  to  be  exclusively 
national.  Is  geography  to  be  confined  to  the 
geography  of  our  land?  How  about  arithmetic? 
Is  there  an  American  multiplication  table?  And 
what  of  "nature  study"  ?  Are  only  American  ani- 
mals to  be  noticed?  Here  is  where  the  theory  be- 
gins to  crack.    Our  own  language  and  history  for 


30  The  War  and  Education 

the  sake  of  our  national  unity?  Yes,  in  plenty, 
and  then  also  the  elements  of  universal  knowl- 
edge— as  much  as  we  can  get. 

Above  the  elementary  education  the  theory  ut- 
terly fails,  and  fails  because  its  advocates  forget 
or  ignore  the  hard  facts  of  history.  We  are  part 
of  the  family  of  nations  and  heir  to  a  great  part 
of  the  world's  heritage  of  freedom.  They  are 
forgetting  that  the  struggle  now  in  progress 
against  an  exclusive  nationahsm  in  culture  is  be- 
ing conducted  by  the  alhed  freedom  of  the  world. 
They  are  forgetting  that  an  exclusively  Ameri- 
can culture  must  tend  either  to  absorb  other  sys- 
tems by  incorporation  or  domination  or,  faihng 
in  that,  to  impair  the  vital  unity  of  our  interna- 
tional civilized  freedom. 

It  is  curious,  but  not  strange,  that  this  question 
hinges  so  largely  on  the  studies  of  language  and 
history.  The  theory  of  a  self -centered  exclusive 
national  culture  inevitably  leads  to  disparage- 
ment of  foreign  languages  and  foreign  history, 
and  especially  of  ancient  history  and  the  classics. 
This  nationalistic  theory,  however,  has  a  power- 
ful ally.  Here  are  his  words  from  the  famous 
address  of  December  17,  1890: 


The  Immortal  Conflict  31 

Whoever  has  been  through  the  gymnasium  and  has 
gone  behind  the  scenes,  knows  where  the  trouble  is.  The 
trouble  is,  first  of  all,  that  we  lack  a  truly  national 
basis.  We  must  take  German  as  the  foundation  of  the 
gymnasium,  we  must  educate  national  young  Germans 
and  not  young  Greeks  and  Romans.  We  must  depart 
from  the  basis  which  has  stood  for  centuries,  the  old 
monastic  education  of  the  Middle  Ages,  in  which  Latin 
was  the  standard,  and  a  little  Greek.  This  is  no  longer 
the  standard;  we  must  make  German  the  basis. 

This  is  the  Kaiser's  own  statement,  the  avowed 
basis  of  his  whole  educational  policy,  the  theory 
which  has  been  at  work  wrecking  German  educa- 
tion for  the  last  thirty  years,  Note  in  passing  the 
reference  to  the  "old  monastic  education."  He 
knew,  as  everyone  here  knows,  that  this  did  not 
exist  in  the  modern  Gymnasium.  Thus  his  ex- 
clusive Kultur  excluded  a  truthful  statement  of 
historic  fact.  Do  we  want  it,  or  anything  like  it? 
Not  so  long  as  the  tree  is  judged  by  its  fruit. 
Not  so  long  as  we  have  memories  to  remember 
what  that  Kultur  has  done.  It  is  well  we  should 
also  hear  a  statement  on  the  other  side,  made 
September  10,  1915,  by  the  Minister  of  Public 
Instruction  of  the  French  Republic :  "The  class- 
ical culture  should  remain  the  object  of  our  ar- 
dent study,  even  if  it  were  only  for  the  reason 


32  The  War  and  Education 

that  it  has  transmitted  to  French  thought  the 
greater  part  of  the  great  ideas  for  which  we  are 
now  fighting." 

It  is  not  a  httle  question.  It  is  this :  Shall  the 
native  tongues  and  literatures  of  ancient  freedom, 
ancestral  to  our  own,  be  abandoned?  The  Kaiser 
says  Yes.  France  says  No.  There  they  stand. 
We  too  must  stand  on  one  side  or  the  other. 
There  is  no  escape  except  to  hide  in  a  paltering 
"neutrahty."  There  is  no  "negotiated  peace" 
here.  There  is  no  third  theory  to  choose — ^noth- 
ing but  a  set  of  compromising,  pitiable  make- 
shifts. One  of  the  two  rivals  must  win  and  the 
other  go  under.    Which  shall  it  be? 

IV 

It  is  great  to  be  a  true  American;  it  is  greater 
to  be  a  true  man  or  woman  here  or  anywhere. 
"That  all  men  everywhere  may  be  free"  was 
Lincoln's  prayer.  Can  we  not  lay  aside  all 
prejudice  and  then  read  our  lesson  in  the  fiery 
light  around  us?  That  lesson  is  that  no  freedom 
is  won  or  held  without  struggle  and  without  self 
denial.  That  lesson  is  that  mental  and  moral 
freedom  is  not  won  or  held  by  any  human  being 
in  any  land  without  whole-minded  training  in  the 


The  Immortal  Conflict  88 

fimdametals  of  knowledge,  be  they  pleasant  or 
unpleasant  at  first,  whole-souled  obedience  to 
duty,  "interesting"  or  uninteresting,  and  whole- 
hearted devotion  to  the  truth  won  and  held  by 
hard  effort,  not  for  money,  place  or  power,  but 
for  the  sake  of  living  decently  in  a  decent  world, 
made  fit  to  be  free. 

In  our  education,  as  in  the  war,  the  "immortal 
conflict"  is  now  on.  In  both  the  same  cause  is 
working.  And  in  both  may  God  defend  the 
right  I 


FRANCE  AND  THE  CLASSICS 


FRANCE  AND  THE  CLASSICS 

[A  French  officer,  visiting  the  United  States  during 
the  war,  was  asked  what  France  was  fighting  for.  He 
answered:  "Pour  humanite  et  les  humanites."  What 
he  expressed  with  such  graphic  brevity  was  the  spirit 
of  France  in  education,  the  spirit  of  humane  civilization 
as  opposed  to  the  spirit  of  gross  and  brutal  material- 
ism. 

A  remarkable  utterance  of  the  same  spirit  is  found 
in  the  address  printed  below.  A  few  days  before  Foch 
started  his  greater  counter-offensive  in  July,  when 
France  was  still  at  bay — ^with  the  Germans  so  close  to 
Paris — the  Minister  of  Public  Instruction,  the  highest 
officer  of  education  in  the  French  Republic,  spoke  at 
the  University  of  Montpellier  to  a  class  of  young  grad- 
uates of  the  Lycee  on  the  spirit  of  French  higher  educa- 
tion in  the  present  war.  The  authority  of  the  speaker, 
the  critical  time  at  which  he  spoke,  and  the  intimate 
connection  of  his  theme  with  our  own  problems  make 
the  subjoined  translation  of  his  eloquent  advocacy  of 
the  classical  humanities  very  timely  and  valuable  read- 
ing.] 

My  dear  friends:  I  feel  a  surprise  mingled 
with  deep  emotion  to  find  myself,  after  thirty 
years,  again  in  the  enclosure  of  this  ancient  and 
glorious  University  of  Montpellier  and  to  realize 
that  nothing  has  grown  old  of  what  there  was 

37 


38  The  War  and  Education 

here  of  permanent  nature  in  its  intellectual  and 
moral  life  and  of  substantial  character  in  its 
methods  of  teaching. 

There  is  here  now  the  same  tradition,  repre- 
sented by  other  masters,  of  whom  some  are  the 
sons  of  the  teachers  we  have  known  formerly. 
Such  a  one  is  the  eminent  professor  whom  you 
have  just  heard,  whose  father  I  once  more  see 
enjoying  the  esteem  and  veneration  of  the  pupils 
of  our  old  Lycee. 

With  what  zeal  and  with  what  talent  he  has 
defended  the  humanities!  And  in  this  tragic 
hour  such  defence  seems  an  anachronism.  "Why 
do  you  talk  of  proportion  and  harmony,"  they 
sa}^  "when  the  world  is  upside  down?  What  con- 
nection is  there  between  classic  thought,  so  calm 
and  serene,  and  the  madness  of  warlike  prepara- 
tion in  which  the  world  seems  to  wish  to  obliter- 
ate what  remains  of  its  wisdom?  What  connec- 
tion is  there  especially  between  this  purely  for- 
mal culture,  between  these  ancient  languages, 
which  assure  us  of  the  supremacy  of  general  ideas, 
and  the  scientific  modern  culture  which  is  now 
turned  toward  the  most  formidable  military  pro- 
duction, and  which  will  turn  to-morrow  toward 
that  industrial  equipment  and  practical  appHca- 


France  and  the  Classics  89 

tion,  which  alone  is  capable  of  aiding  us  to  main- 
tain competition  on  economic  ground  where  we 
will  have  to  defend  ourselves  and  to  triumph." 

Those  who  formulate  these  objections  are  su- 
perficial observers.  They  draw  from  certain  ap- 
pearances hasty  conclusions  which  the  examina- 
tion of  facts  is  far  from  demonstrating.  Of 
course,  the  question  may  be  raised  whether  or 
not  Latin  and  Greek  culture  should  continue  to 
hold  the  first  place  in  our  studies.  In  other  words, 
is  the  teaching  of  ancient  languages  to  be  consid- 
ered as  the  base  of  every  complete  education,  with 
the  other  studies  as  accessories  imposed  by  the 
necessities  of  modern  life? 

With  regard  to  this  point,  the  conclusions  of 
your  teacher  are  absolutely  clear:  he  thinks  that 
French  and  foreign  (modern)  classic  authors, 
even  those  the  most  imbued  with  antiquity,  have 
not  the  same  educative  value  as  the  Greek  and 
Roman  writers.  Only  an  acquaintance  with  the 
ancient  masters  in  their  own  language,  only  the 
habit  of  thinking  in  Latin  and  Greek,  only  re- 
search into  ancient  thought,  seem  to  constitute  the 
true  exercise  of  the  mind,  the  true  method  of 
assimilating  the  moral  ideas  and  the  noble  senti- 
ments which  form  the  man  truly  worthy  of  the 
name. 


40  The  War  and  Education 

There  are,  therefore,  no  other  true  humanities 
than  those  that  result  from  the  habit  of  thinking 
in  Greek  and  Latin,  in  order  to  write  better  in 
French.  And  it  is  very  evident  that,  in  spite  of 
the  very  energetic  effort  to  modernize  teaching, 
this  positive  doctrine  has  not  been  entirely  aban- 
doned. We  know  that  the  secondary  education 
of  girls — the  most  recent  development  of  the 
State — still  seeks  out  its  way  by  endeavoring  not 
to  lose  contact  with  the  ancient  languages,  wheth- 
er that  be  in  preparing  partially  for  the  bacca- 
laureate or  by  approximating  a  classical  plan  of 
study.  We  know  that  the  same  thought  is  mak- 
ing itself  felt  in  the  upper  normal  schools,  where 
a  modest  place  has  just  been  made  for  the  teaching 
of  Latin.  I  do  not  say  that  these  are  solutions 
free  from  every  criticism.  But  it  is  as  it  were  a 
recognition  that  there  has  been  a  lack  of  our  clas- 
sic methods  and,  at  the  same  time,  a  silent  com- 
pliment rendered  to  our  old  humanities. 

One  thing  remains  beyond  question:  it  is  that 
for  the  formation  of  thought  and  of  character, 
for  the  moral  and  civic  education  of  the  present 
age,  we  have  to  draw  upon  the  old  sources  of 
Latin  and  Greek  education.  Your  teacher  has 
given  the  chief  reason :    Latin  and  Greek  culture 


France  and  the  Classics  41 

is  not  an  ornament  or  a  luxury,  but  even  among 
those  who  least  realize  it,  it  is  the  basis  of  the  for- 
mation of  modern  intellect. 

It  is  possible  that  classical  education,  carried 
to  the  very  sources,  must  be  reserved  for  the  few — 
we  ma3%  indeed,  say  that  with  certainty.  The 
conception  of  national  public  instruction  for  all 
children,  together  with  a  higher  course  purely 
classical  intended  for  those  pupils  whom  an  intel- 
ligent selection  designates,  is  not  illogical.  And 
at  all  events  we  must  choose  our  authors  and  our 
books  in  order  to  train  the  citizens  of  a  free 
democracy ;  we  must  at  least  inculcate  in  them  the 
principles  of  reason,  of  clearness,  of  energj^  in 
action,  which  form  the  basis  of  the  ancient  liter- 
atures and  which  will  always  be  the  best  initia- 
tion of  children  and  of  men  into  the  harsh  neces- 
sities of  contemporary  life. 

But  history  testifies  that  these  qualities  are  the 
possession  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans,  whose 
natural  heirs  we  are — and  history  shows  that  for 
us  they  are  the  examples  of  vigor  we  must  fol- 
low. It  seems  but  yesterday  that  immortal  dis- 
course On  the  Crown  was  written,  wherein  De- 
mosthenes, though  conquered  at  Chseronea,  dem- 
onstrated to  an  excited  audience  that  the  princi- 


42  The  War  and  Education 

pies  and  obligations  of  a  great  people  are  inde- 
pendent of  the  chance  fortune  of  battles,  and  that 
eternal  duty  is  not  always  to  be  measured  by  the 
success  of  a  day.  After  two  thousand  years  an- 
other great  Greek  patriot,  Venizelos,  Prime  Min- 
ister to  a  King  unfaithful  to  the  Allies,  who  tried 
to  intimidate  him  by  the  thought  of  a  possible  de- 
feat of  the  Entente,  replied  proudly  before  giv- 
ing in  his  resignation,  that  he  did  not  measure 
his  support  by  the  surety  of  the  AlHes'  success. 
He,  at  least,  more  happy  than  Demosthenes, 
saved  the  honor  of  his  country,  and  will  be  able 
to  claim  his  part  in  the  common  victory  for  which 
we  all  pray.  .  .  . 

Let  us  not  commit  the  error,  in  this  age  of 
science  and  industry,  of  separating  the  humani- 
ties from  scientific  study.  The  services  they  can 
render  each  other  cannot  be  overestimated.  Our 
greatest  classic  writers  have  also  been  scientists 
— a  Pascal  astonishes  us  by  his  taste  for  scientific 
precision  and  by  his  observance  of  proportion  and 
harmony,  as  well  as  by  his  vigorous  logic  and 
intensity  of  feeling.  So  it  happens  that  if  our 
great  scientists  are  immortal,  it  is  because  they 
have  at  the  same  time  been  great  writers.  A 
Claude  Bernard  is  known  by  a  book  which  en- 


France  and  the  Classics  43 

dures.  And,  without  desiring  to  decry  the  scien- 
tific effort  of  the  Germans,  we  can  say  that  their 
diffuse  researches  for  the  purpose  of  enlightening 
human  knowledge  are  not  equal  in  value  to  the 
bright  logic  and  admirable  clearness  which  sum 
up  and  coordinate  all  the  genius  of  an  epoch. 

The  fact  is  that  the  classic  cultm-e  enfolds  and 
animates  all  the  manifestations  of  our  national 
thought  and  activity.  It  is  a  perpetual  lesson  in 
good  sense  and  vigor.  It  teaches  the  love  of  the 
good,  the  true,  the  beautiful,  and  of  progress  by 
means  of  method;  it  applies  to  all  effort  and  all 
work;  it  enhances  all  the  acts  and  deeds  of  men 
by  the  priceless  gifts  of  grace  and  harmony;  it 
makes  them  valued  by  reason  of  its  appreciation 
of  dignity,  and  by  its  own  self-respect  as  well  as 
by  the  respect  of  others. 

I  know  well  that  the  world  is  now  preoccupied 
with  utilitarian  ideas.  Our  universities,  our 
scientific  colleges  especially,  are  endeavoring  to 
put  science  in  the  service  of  the  regions  in  which 
they  are  placed,  and  to  extend  themselves  everj'^- 
where,  according  to  the  needs  and  the  resources 
of  each  place,  in  institutes  of  applied  art.  There 
is  thus  special  adaptation  in  each  region  and  var- 
iety in  national  unity.    And  these  are  conditions 


44  The  War  and  Education 

highly  favorable  for  the  contest  against  German 
methods,  whose  all-pervading  discipline  consti- 
tutes the  strength  of  their  formidable  competi- 
tion. But  let  us  not  lose  sight  of  our  own  quali- 
ties, which  make  us  loved  for  ourselves,  and  let  us 
oppose  to  the  perverse  research  into  the  enormous 
and  the  colossal  that  good  taste  and  sense  of 
proportion  which  are  the  characteristics  of  our 
genius,  and  which  cannot  be  acquired  by  the  sim- 
ple effort  of  mere  imitation. 

French  genius  puts  art  in  life  everywhere.  It 
gives  a  personal  character  to  the  most  ordinary 
needs,  to  the  most  mechanical  manual  labor. 
There  is  an  art  of  mixing  mortar  as  well  as  of 
guiding  a  machine.  Each  one  brings  to  the  task 
his  own  manner  and  initiative.  There  is  a  saying 
that  man  must  love  his  trade.  It  is  not  brutal 
discipline  and  mechanical  organization  which  lead 
to  that;  it  is  individual  taste  and  the  stamp  of 
personality  on  things.  It  is  in  that  that  we  find 
united  in  the  most  obscure  corners  of  workshops 
and  fields  the  humanism  and  the  manual  trade 
that  were  considered  opposites,  while  actually 
they  lend  the  most  admirable  and  happy  support 
to  each  other. 

"But,"  you  may  say,  "war  has  upset  this  bar- 


France  and  the  Classics  45 

mony,  and  we  are  a  prey  to  the  inevitable  brutal- 
ity of  force."  Those  who  endanger  their  lives 
and  threaten  the  lives  of  others,  have  they  the 
leisure  to  think  of  the  ideal,  to  count  the  blows 
that  they  give  and  take,  to  measure  the  value  of 
their  military  action  by  the  beauty  and  holiness 
of  their  cause?" 

Gentlemen,  that  is  blasphemy  against  your  kin, 
and  mine,  who  are  inscribed  in  the  Golden  Book 
of  this  University.  Do  you  think  that  those  of 
your  teachers  and  of  your  great  comrades  who 
have  faced  death  have  not  had  two  reasons  for 
sacrificing  themselves — one,  patriotism,  which  is 
theirs  in  common  with  all  Frenchmen;  the 
other,  an  exact  knowledge  of  the  object  of  their 
sacrifice?  Do  you  think  that  when  death  comes 
upon  them  in  action,  more  than  one  does  not  have 
upon  his  lips  some  verses  of  Corneille  he  read  the 
evening  before,  or  the  memory  of  a  passage  of 
Homer  in  which  Hector,  sacrificing  himself  to 
duty,  and  knowing  that  he  must  perish,  never- 
theless welcomes  his  destiny  with  pride,  and  re- 
solves to  die  without  complaint? 

May  I  recall  here  the  word  of  a  man  of  this 
University,  a  lieutenant  in  the  infantry,  who 
listened  one  evening  in  the  trenches  to  the  reflec- 


46  The  War  and  Education 

tions  of  his  men?  "I,"  said  one,  "fight  for  my 
fields  of  grain."  And  another,  "I  for  my  wife  and 
children";  and  another,  "I  for  my  momitains." 
And  the  officer  said  gravely:  "I  fight  for  La 
Fontaine  and  Mohere :  La  Fontaine,  the  immor- 
tal heir  of  Msoi^  and  of  Phaedrus;  Moliere,  the 
immortal  heir  of  Plautus  and  of  Terence,  and  still 
further  of  Aristophanes  and  of  Menander."  Yes, 
my  friends,  acquaintance  with  art  and  beauty  is 
an  element  of  bravery  in  the  teachers  and  pupils 
of  the  University.  They  know  better  than  the 
others  why  they  die,  and  if  they  know  how  to 
hand  the  torch  which  illumines  them  to  the  sol- 
diers whom  they  lead  to  the  assault,  it  is  because 
they  have  before  their  eyes  an  ideal,  the  secret  of 
which  has  been  a  long  time  revealed  to  them 
through  their  study  of  the  humanities.  .  .  . 

Yes,  let  us  keep  all  our  advantages,  and  let  us 
deny  nothing  of  our  university  tradition.  That 
is  our  strength  for  to-day  and  to-morrow.  Let 
us  keep  our  old  inheritance  of  Gallic  strength 
and  daring,  but  let  us  not  put  aside  the  intellec- 
tual and  moral  discipline  we  owe  to  the  ancient 
humanities.  It  is  that  which  makes  us  to-day 
more  French — that  is  to  say,  more  human.  It  is 
that  which  has  prepared  us  for  victory  by  render- 


France  and  the  Classics  47 

ing  us  worthy  of  it.  It  is  that  which  to-morrow 
will  cause  our  triumph  to  be  acclaimed  by  all  the 
peoples  who  see  in  our  cause  that  of  humanity, 
conscious  alike  of  its  duties  and  its  rights.  It  is 
finally  that  which,  when  beneficent  peace  shall 
reign  upon  the  earth,  will  conserve  to  our  country, 
loved  and  admired  by  the  world,  the  place  of 
honor  to  which  its  past  gives  it  all  its  titles,  the 
place  it  will  know  well  how  to  keep  in  the  future, 
the  first  place. 


THE  HUMANITIES  AFTER  THE  WAR 


THE  HUMANITIES  AFTER  THE  WAR 

I 

Napoleon  wrote  the  epitaph  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  the  age  of  artificiahty.  The  war  now 
ending  is  writing  the  epitaph  of  the  nineteenth, 
the  age  of  boasting.  This  period  of  vast  achieve- 
ment was,  as  Frederic  Harrison  described  it,  the 
age  of  confident  self-laudation  par  excellence. 
With  characteristic  aggressiveness  it  pushed  over 
a  bit  into  the  twentieth,  and  perhaps  for  its  pre- 
sumption has  been  violently  stopped  by  a  war 
waged  with  the  very  implements  it  had  forged 
and  had  labelled  with  the  stamp  of  Progress. 

Amid  its  manifold  activities  the  most  vigorous 
intellectual  impulse  was  science,  at  first  mainly 
in  the  form  of  knowledge  as  such  and  later  more 
notably  in  its  myriad  applications  to  human  use. 
Through  this  practical  development,  which  grew 
in  strength  as  the  century  advanced,  the  mater- 
ial side  of  human  life  was  enriched  as  never  be- 
fore, and  science,  whether  pure  or  applied,  so 
long  as  controlled  for  human  welfare  conferred 
enormous  benefits,  and  if  morally  uncontrolled, 

51 


52  The  War  and  Education 

as  of  late,  wrought  fearful  evil.  In  the  latest 
perversion  of  its  true  use  all  the  three  major 
sciences  have  been  dragged  into  the  service  of 
death.  Physics,  with  chemistry  helping,  gave 
us  the  submarine  assassin,  chemistry  the  murder- 
ous gases,  and  biology  furnished  germs  to  poison 
man  and  beast  in  Roumania.  Yet  these  things, 
devilish  as  the  uses  to  which  they  were  put,  were 
not  in  themselves  necessarily  evil.  Conceivably 
they  might  have  been  used  for  commendable  ends ; 
the  anthrax  germ  as  an  antitoxin,  the  murderous 
gases  to  destroy  vermin  and  the  submarine  even 
to  transport  missionaries.  It  is  clearly  seen  that 
the  imminent  danger  of  their  misuse  lies,  not  in 
the  nature  of  science,  but  in  the  motive  which 
prompted  the  misuse  by  making  such  devices 
easily  available  in  the  hands  of  unscrupulous  men 
or  nations.  The  execration  of  mankind  has  fallen 
justly  on  those  who  thus  misapphed  applied  sci- 
ence, and  a  clamorous  demand  is  justly  made  that 
it  shall  henceforth  be  applied  only  to  humane 
ends,  for  the  reason  that  when  applied  to  inhuman 
ends  it  becomes  the  hired  accomphce  of  immoral- 
ity. It  is  a  dreadful  fact  that  while  the  guilt  of 
introducing  this  misuse  in  the  world-war  rests  on 
Germany,  the  leader  in  applied  science,  our  side 


The  Humanities  After  the  War  53 

has  been  driven  to  use  some  of  these  agencies  in 
retahation.  Apphed  science  has  thus  freely  fur- 
nished mercenaries  to  either  side.  Its  devices 
have  been  for  sale  to  any  buyer.  But  as  honor 
and  decency  are  things  not  for  sale,  it  is  not  sur- 
prising that  men  are  now  incredulous  in  regard 
to  the  dependability  of  science  taken  by  itself, 
especially  of  applied  science,  as  a  safe  moral  fac- 
tor in  education  and  in  the  resultant  civilization 
for  which  education  prepares. 

Is  high  intelligence  separable  from  honor  and 
decency?  The  Greek  thinkers  said  No.  Recent 
German  thought  says  Yes.^  There  is  no  need  to 
argue  in  this  presence  that  although  there  are 
notable  instances  of  high  intellectuality  combined 
with  low  morality  and  although  exemption  from 
moral  restraint  has  been  at  times  supposed  to  be 
a  necessary  condition  of  intellectual  freedom, 
men  of  high  intelligence  and  low  morals  are 
nevertheless  dangerous  to  human  society,  per- 
sons to  be  watched  rather  than  trusted,  persons 
whose  dangerousness  is  intensified  by  their  degree 
of  intelligence,  and  who  should  therefore  be  so- 
cially and  educationally  reprobated  or  at  least 

^  For  a  lucid  review  of  this  question  see  Emile  Boutroux's 
Oxford  lecture  on  "The  Relation  between  Thought  and 
Action,"  Clarendon  Press,  Oxford,  1918. 


54  The  War  and  Education 

"interned."  And  in  this  time  of  the  world's  trial 
there  is  no  need  to  argue  that  governments  or  na- 
tions of  this  high-low  type  cannot  be  trusted  in 
the  family  of  nations.  All  the  proof  we  need  is  to 
be  found  in  the  imdeniable  fact  that  when  trust 
vanishes,  civilized  relations  collapse.  And  we 
must  have  a  civilization  which  is  not  collapsible. 
Whether  or  no  decent  morals  are  essential  to  high 
intellectuality  is  therefore  a  question  of  little 
importance  compared  with  the  fact  that  human 
behavior  resting  on  decent  morals  is  essential  to 
the  world's  safety. 

Can  education  in  science,  considered  by  itself 
alone,  and  especially  in  applied  science,  be  surely 
depended  on  to  foster  this  himiane  behavior  in 
men  and  to  ground  it,  not  on  considerations  of 
mere  convention  or  expediency,  but  on  honor  and 
decency?  The  war  has  answered  this  momentous 
question  in  the  negative.  While  not  at  all  a  con- 
demnation of  science,  but  of  its  abuses  in  applica- 
tion, it  is  nevertheless  a  demand  that  in  all  its  uses 
it  shall  henceforth  stand  always  as  the  ally  and 
never  as  the  enemy  of  man's  moral  welfare. 

There  is  some  hard  travelling  to  do  before  this 
end  is  reached.  To  begin  with,  science  will  need 
to  be  taught  purely  as  science,  without  admixture 


The  Humanities  After  the  War  55 

of  other  things.  Otherwise  its  true  nature  is  ob- 
scured and  men  will  be  misled  as  to  its  meaning. 
For  example,  applied  science  has  lately  been  en- 
tangled at  times  in  serving  sordid  purposes,  so 
that  its  own  freedom  as  science  has  been  hampered 
and  its  beneficial  influence  impaired.  To  make 
industrial  processes  scientific  is  a  most  worthy 
end,  but  to  conmiercialize  science  is  to  degrade  it. 
The  two  have  not  always  been  distinguished., 
They  must  be  distinguished  if  applied  science  is 
to  be  the  best  applied  science  or  is  to  remain 
science  at  all. 

Pure  science  also  has  been  at  times  entangled 
in  extraneous  things.  Take  an  example  from 
biology.  "The  strong  must  survive,"  "the  weak 
must  perish,"  "it  is  the  law  of  life,"  "Nature  heads 
up  things  in  an  autocratic  way,"  "war  is  a  normal 
condition  for  a  nation  seeking  to  realize  its  own 
life,"  "war  is  a  biological  necessitj^" — such  are 
the  utterances  of  recent  German  thinkers.  But 
this  is  not  biologj^  proper.  It  is  biologv^  infected 
by  a  delusive  theory  of  human  society  and  leaping 
to  the  inference  that  the  law  of  the  jungle  is  of 
course  the  law  of  the  home,  the  community  and 
the  state.  It  is  one  of  the  main  causes  which  has 
provoked  the  extreme  and  angry  answer  of  social- 


56  The  War  and  Education 

ism.  For  biology,  then,  as  pure  biology  and  the 
mother-science  of  medicine,  the  champion  of  the 
weak,  serving  humane  ends  and  itself  uncontami- 
nated  by  any  infection,  a  broad  road  is  open  to 
endless  beneficient  progress.  But  if  that  road  is 
missed,  some  devious  way  must  be  travelled. 

Given,  then,  science  as  science,  true  to  its  own 
standards,  debased  by  no  sordid  use  and  mingled 
with  no  alien  substance,  its  real  function  as  an 
educational  subject  of  immense  value  becomes 
clearer.  It  is  to  acquaint  Man  with  the  truths  of 
Nature  and  the  beneficent  uses  these  truths  may 
serve.  It  thus  becomes  a  question  of  high  im- 
portance as  to  how  education  in  science,  espe- 
cially in  the  earlier  formative  stages,  may  remain 
purely  scientific  and  may  at  the  same  time  help 
in  developing  its  students  humanely  and  morally. 
This  importance  becomes  clearer,  both  because  of 
certain  considerations  external  to  science  and 
because  the  chief  object  in  the  earlier  formative 
teaching  is  not  the  development  of  science,  but 
the  development  of  the  student.  The  other 
comes  later.  It  is  not  too  much  to  assert  that 
when  science  is  first  studied  by  these  younger 
students,  not  as  the  analysis  of  developed  mod- 
ern results  nor  for  immediate  practical  use,  but 


The  Humanities  After  the  War  57 

as  the  historical  panorama  which  shows  definitely 
the  successive  stages  of  its  development  by  human 
discoverers  who  were  benefactors  and  even  mar- 
tyrs and  heroes  of  mankind,  it  is  science  thus 
studied  which  is  most  likely  to  show  them  how 
science  actually  came  to  be  what  it  is,  to  yield 
knowledge  in  vital  form  (so  to  speak,  in  a  "nas- 
cent state"),  to  waken  livelier  interest,  to  show 
its  importance  as  a  part  of  human  experience, 
and  to  reveal  its  grandeur  as  an  ever-growing 
power  for  human  welfare.  If  our  youth  start  in 
science  the  other  way,  the  humanizing  and  moral- 
izing value  is  apt  to  seem  remote,  intangible  and 
even  imreal,  and  the  importance  of  guiding  all 
scientific  applications  toward  beneficent  ends  is 
not  so  Hkely  to  be  suggested,  much  less  to  be  ob- 
viously implied. 

Take  another  point.  To  put  the  right  thought 
in  the  right  words  is  admittedly  a  mark  of  the 
best  teaching.  So  long  as  language  is  the  one 
general  instrument  of  thought,  as  it  has  been  since 
civilization  began  and  promises  to  be  so  long  as 
civilization  lasts,  its  necessity  in  teaching  science 
and  everything  else  is  self-evident..  In  view  of 
this  it  is  appalling  that  many  of  our  teachers, 
some  of  them  in  universities,  are  in  a  sense  illiter- 


58  The  War  and  Education 

ate.  They  cannot  use  language  well  and  there- 
fore lose  power  to  teach  adequately  either  in  the 
class  room  or  in  their  writings.  Specialization 
without  a  good  literary  training  has  more  and 
more  restricted  them  in  power  to  say  well  what 
they  think.  Lacking  literary  vision  or  assured 
mastery  of  English,  they  are  forced  to  talk  al- 
most entirely  in  the  dialect  of  their  specialties. 
Anyone  who  is  acquainted  with  our  doctoral 
theses,  especially  in  applied  science,  knows  how 
serious  this  illiteracy  is.  And  it  is  utterly  for- 
eign to  the  nature  of  science.  Of  course  the 
needed  technical  terms  must  be  used  to  tell  what 
only  technical  terms  can  state.  But  this  should 
be  the  limit  of  such  usage.  It  has  been  fearfully 
overdone.  If  it  sufficed  a  Newton  to  define  the 
atom  as  "the  least  part  of  matter"  (whether 
rightly  or  wrongly  is  of  no  consequence  here), 
our  writers  may  well  follow  his  lead  and  use 
plain  English  for  all  plain  English  will  say.  It 
will  add  to  their  ease,  freedom  and  human  tone, 
besides  making  their  statements  less  involved 
and  more  attractive.  Their  writings  will  then 
have  a  better  chance  to  be  read. 


TJie  Humanities  After  the  War  59 

II 

What  has  all  this  to  do  with  the  educational 
future  of  the  humanities  in  our  land  after  the 
war?  Much  in  every  way.  I  have  taken  the  in- 
stance of  science  because  it  is  so  conspicuous  just 
now,  because  it  is  so  important  and  because  there 
are  many  who  feel  that  a  training  in  science, 
especially  in  apphed  science,  is  a  sufficient  basis, 
perhaps  even  the  main  basis  for  our  coming  edu- 
cation. I  have  tried  to  show  that  science  does 
better  as  a  humanizing  and  moralizing  force  in 
education  when  it  uses  the  helps  of  history,  lan- 
guage and  literature  in  order  to  make  its  appeal 
to  young  students  more  fully  human,  and  that 
without  these  valuable  contacts  it  loses  much  of 
its  persuasiveness  in  teaching  and  the  vivid  sense 
of  its  neighborhood  to  other  iields  of  knowledge. 

What  of  our  coming  education  in  the  humani- 
ties themselves?  and  especially  in  language,  the 
instrument  of  man's  thought,  in  literature,  the 
mirror  of  his  moods,  and  in  history,  the  record 
of  his  deeds.  They,  too,  will  need  to  be  reso- 
lutely true  to  their  own  function,  which  is  to  ac- 
quaint Man  with  himself  and  with  all  the  bene- 
fits this  acquaintance  brings.     Some  think  it  is 


60  The  War  and  Education 

a  useless  training,  something  intangible  and  un- 
practical, or  at  best  a  pleasant  accomplishment 
rather  than  a  solid  attainment.  Yes,  it  is  in- 
tangible in  a  way,  yet  not  more  intangible  than 
the  sense  of  justice,  truth  or  freedom.  And  it  is 
perhaps  unpractical  for  many  of  the  quick  and 
obvious  utilities.  But  what  of  the  greater  utili- 
ties? Was  it  "useful"  to  the  world  in  this  war 
that  the  swiftest  voluntary  response  to  the  first 
call  of  freedom  came  from  the  colleges  and  no- 
tably from  the  older  homes  of  humanistic  stud- 
ies? Some  may  have  thought  these  playful,  care- 
free fellows  did  not  know  very  well  how  to  live, 
but  at  least  they  have  shown  that  they  knew  how 
to  die.  Their  education,  science  included  and  the 
old  humanities  included  too,  and  not  some  mili- 
tary or  technical  training,  is  what  their  letters 
told  us  was  a  preparation  which  stood  them  in 
good  stead.  Has  the  war  given  us  any  reason  to 
doubt  the  worth  of  their  training?  Has  it  not 
rather  emphasized  it?  The  example  of  such  men 
indicates  anew  that  the  value  of  the  humanities, 
like  the  true  value  of  science,  is  to  be  tested  by 
their  fidelity  to  their  proper  function  and  by  their 
wholesome  results  in  human  life. 

As  for  our  own  language,  it  seems  needless  to 


The  Humanities  After  the  War  61 

say  it  should  be  well  understood  and  well  used  as 
our  chief  instrument  of  thought.  The  war  prop- 
erly adds  the  demand  that  it  shall  be  the  sole  lan- 
guage in  our  primary  schools,  and  shall  thus 
become  a  stronger  unifying  force  in  our  nation 
and  a  stronger  bond  of  union  with  the  whole  Eng* 
lish-speaking  world.  The  better  unification  of 
English  itself  would  be  another  great  help  to 
this  end.  And  if  it  is  impossible  or  for  any  rea- 
son inadvisable  to  obliterate  regional  or  social 
variations,  at  least  those  who  call  themselves  edu- 
cated could  strive  to  lesson  the  difference  in  their 
own  usage  and  thus  gradually  establish  a  better 
common  standard.  For  if  educated  English 
speech,  here  and  the  world  over,  shall  become 
very  nearly  one,  its  influence  will  spread  widely 
through  the  thousand  utterances  of  voice  and 
print,  and  good  English  may  yet  become  the 
common  English  of  the  world. 

How  shall  this  be  promoted  in  the  schools? 
Some  say  "By  studymg  Enghsh  alone."  There 
are  cases  where  this  result  has  happened.  But 
they  are  few  in  number  and  prove  nothing  for 
the  mass  of  students.  The  fact  that  a  boy  does 
not  or  will  not  study  a  foreign  tongue  does  not 
prove  him  another  Lincoln.     The  war  does  not 


62  The  War  and  Education 

alter  this.  Nor  has  school-study  of  modern  lan- 
guages coordinate  to  our  own  produced  an  appre- 
ciably better  use  of  English.  It  has  oftener  dis- 
figured English  with  strange  locutions.  The 
war  has  not  helped  to  remove  this  difficulty.  The 
fact  that  these  highly  important  modern  tongues 
are  coordinate  and  not  fundamental  to  our  own 
is  the  important  persistent  fact  which  cannot  be 
ignored  in  this  connection.  Brothers  and  sisters 
do  not  get  their  fundamental  traits  from  each 
other,  but  from  their  common  ancestors.  We 
need  not,  then,  be  surprised  that  the  teachers  of 
English  and  of  modern  languages  constantly  as- 
sure us  that  the  best  way  is  to  study  the  classics. 
Our  latest  school  and  college  records  confirm  this 
as  a  fact,  a  fact  no  more  likely  to  be  changed  by 
the  war  than  the  fact  that  mathematics  is  a  fine 
preparation  for  physics  and  history  a  fine  prepa- 
ration for  political  science.  In  regard  to  the 
modern  languages  themselves,  there  is  a  marked 
change  due  to  the  war.  The  available  facts  indi- 
cate that  German  has  lost  fully  three-fourths  of 
its  students,  French  has  gained  strongly  and 
Spanish  substantially.  That  America  will  pre- 
fer French,  as  she  has  preferred  France,  may  be 
expected.     It  is  not  likely  that  German,  which 


The  Humanities  After  the  War  63 

had  been  artificially  stimulated  anyway,  will  fully 
regain  its  former  importance.  It  is  too  early  to 
say  whether  the  large  gain  in  Spanish  will  last 
or  will  increase  much  more.  Of  the  classical  lan- 
guages Greek  is  gaining  a  httle  here  and  there 
and  Latin  is  gaining  considerably.  The  main 
trend  is  toward  the  closely  related  Latin,  French 
and  Spanish— to  name  them  in  the  order  of  their 
total  enrolments.  It  shoidd  not  be  forgotten  that 
Latin  actually  has  more  students  than  are  found 
in  all  the  foreign  modern  languages,  and  that  this 
leading  position  is  being  strengthened  by  gains 
made  since  the  war  began. 

The  war  has  also  called  new  attention  to  the 
classics  as  the  fundamental  linguistic  and  literary 
bond  of  Western  civilization.  The  continued 
effort  of  the  Kaiser  throughout  his  reign,  now 
closed,  to  hack  and  hew  this  old  bond  in  the  in- 
terest of  a  nationalistic  Kultur  released  from  in- 
ternational ties  has  been  the  most  marked  feature 
of  his  educational  Thirty  Years'  War.  This 
war  also  reveals  France  as  standing  against  him 
in  this.  The  stirring  address  of  Lafferre,'  Minis- 
ter of  Public  Instruction,  delivered  at  Montpel- 

2  Translated  in  the  New  York  Evening  Post  of  September 
21,  1918.     See  page  37. 


64  The  War  and  Education 

lier  a  few  days  before  Foch  launched  his  counter- 
offensive,  shows  how  ardently  France  cares  for 
the  old  humanities,  and  all  the  more  when  the 
Germans  are  close  to  Paris.  The  situation  re- 
veals two  warring  tendencies ;  intolerant  national- 
istic unity  and  tolerant  international  community. 
Whichever  of  these  is  best  for  the  world  will  nat- 
urally be  best  for  our  coming  education.  Is  there 
any  good  reason  why  America  should  not  stand 
here  with  France?  and  with  England?  and  with 
all  who  beHeve  in  an  educational  League  of  Na- 
tions to  uphold  humane  studies?  With  the  per- 
sistence of  separate  languages  and  nationalities, 
and  the  addition  of  new  nations,  all  needing 
strong  common  bonds,  the  need  for  a  common 
humanistic  element  of  union  will  increase. 

A  word  is  in  place  here  as  to  the  need  of  teach- 
ing literature  as  literature,  not  as  anything  else, 
and  of  teaching  it  humanely  and  nobly.  Thus  in 
teaching  an  author  the  real  object  is  to  introduce 
the  student  to  the  author.  If  anything  pedantic, 
mechanical  or  extraneous  interferes  with  this,  the 
student  is  ill-taught.  If  taught  as  "the  criticism 
of  life"  (only  one  of  its  phases),  it  degenerates 
into  cheap  philosophizing,  whereas  when  viewed 
as  the  picture  of  life,  it  has  a  chance  to  reveal  all 


The  Humanities  After  the  War  65 

its  values.  When  infected  with  the  germs  of 
social  decadence,  it  becames  poisonous.  Our 
literature,  thanks  to  the  war,  is  now  somewhat 
cleansed.  A  lot  of  bad  books  are  suddenly  out  of 
date.  The  finer  aspects  of  Hfe,  now  vividly  in 
view,  suggest  that  a  better  understanding  of  the 
nature  of  hterature  is  desirable.  The  demand  is 
heard  that  oddity  or  caprice  shall  no  longer  be 
taken  as  evidence  of  genius,  that  literature  shall 
bear  a  nobler  aspect  and  that  the  "golden  mean" 
of  the  masters  in  expression  shall  again  be  the 
Golden  Rule  for  style.  It  may  even  happen  that 
Plato's  canon  of  the  true,  the  beautiful  and  the 
good  will  again  become  the  canon  of  letters  and  of 
art  also.  If  so,  a  better  age  is  dawning.  It  is 
devoutly  to  be  hoped  that  our  schools  will  be  con- 
ducted in  this  spirit,  and  down  to  the  last  details, 
so  that,  for  instance,  even  our  school  readers  shall 
generally  be  worth  reading. 

Our  third  study  is  history,  a  momentous  sub- 
ject by  itself  and  more  so  now  because  of  the  flat 
contradictions  we  have  met  in  regard  to  recent 
events  of  the  first  importance.  History  is  the 
recorded  memory  of  mankind.  It  is  Experience 
teaching — and  teaching  now.  What  our  own 
memory  means  to  us,  history  means  to  the  civi- 


66  The  War  and  Education 

lized  world.    It  is  still  true  after  the  war,  as  be- 
fore it,  that  a  boy  without  a  memory  cannot  be 
educated.    It  is  hard  to  believe  any  school-study 
is  of  greater  consequence.     If  the  war  teaches 
us  anything  about  historical  teaching,  it  teaches 
that  we  need  to  know  the  record  of  what  has  hap- 
pened.    We  must  therefore,  first  of  all,  learn 
history  as  history,  not  as  politics,  not  as  philoso- 
phy, and  not  as  science.    If  the  accounts  are  in 
conflict  or  are  otherwise  unreliable,  we  must  know 
what  the  existing  accounts  are  before  we  can 
judge  them.     Their  value  to  the  young  student 
therefore  lies  in  allowing  him  to  read  the  story  of 
the  past  as  the  writers  told  it  and  not  as  altered  by 
editors.    Such  records,  with  the  originals  unalter- 
ed, in  spirit  at  least,  when  summarized  in  text 
books,  compends  and  compilations,  are  the  only 
safe  provisional  basis  for  later  judgment.     The 
necessity  for  this  is  forced  upon  us  by  the  fact 
that  history  has  been  falsified  at  times  by  writers 
who  are  so  anxious  to  "see  things  as  they  are"  that 
they  cannot  see  things  as  they  were.    This  is  not 
the  limit  of  the  evil,  because  some  of  them  uncon- 
sciously or  consciously  see  the  past  mainly  in  the 
light  of  the  present  and  as  colored  by  their  own 
prepossessions.    This  has  been  notorious  for  the 
last  generation  in  Germany.     So  let  the  new 


The  Humanities  After  the  War  G7 

"science  of  ancient  history,"  made  in  Germany, 
furnish  us  an  example.  In  his  Vergangenheit 
und  Gegenwart,  pubhshed  the  year  before  the 
war,  Wendland  thus  explains  what  Philip  of  Ma- 
cedan  did  to  Greek  democracy: 

"It  is  now  common  knowledge  how  Philip  con- 
solidated his  state,  kept  his  dangerous  northern 
neighbors  in  their  proper  territorial  limits,  cre- 
ated a  citizen  army  of  his  people  and  an  officers' 
corps  of  the  nobility.  .  .  .  The  temperate  and 
careful  character  of  Philip's  dealing  with  the 
Athenian  Demos  shows  that  he  pursued  no  ruth- 
less policy  of  aggrandizement.  .  .  .  This  serves 
admirably  the  purpose  of  training  one  in  politi- 
cal thinking,  helps  to  guard  one  against  the  influ- 
ences of  trivial  talk  about  morality  and  politics, 
and  makes  one  realize  that  such  a  conflict  cannot 
be  settled  by  international  arbitration.  It  should 
be  emphasized  that  Demosthenes  was  actuated  in 
his  condemnation  of  the  enemy  by  motives  of 
patriotic  hate.  Furthermore  one  should  strongly 
emphasize  the  superior  merits  of  a  thorough  sys- 
tem of  monarchical  government  and  of  military 
discipline."^ 

^  See  Professor  Knipfing's  article  on  "The  War  and  The 
Teaching  of  Ancient  History,"  pp.  301-302,  Ohio  Teach- 
ers' Journal,  March,  1918. 


68  The  War  and  Education 

There  is  more;  but  this  is  enough.  And  this 
"thinly  disguised  eulogy"  of  Prussian  imperial- 
ism is  put  forth  as  history!  For  "Philip"  read 
"Wilhehn"  and  for  the  "Athenian  Demos"  read 
"France."  What  more  cogent  reason  could  we 
have  for  insisting  that  in  our  education  the  rec- 
ords of  history  should  be  allowed  to  speak  for 
themselves  and  that  no  one  who  falsifies  their 
meaning  shall  be  known  as  a  historian?  Is  it 
"trivial"  to  talk  of  morality  in  connection  with 
politics?  So  this  writer  thinks,  and  thus  rein- 
forces our  conviction  that  the  teaching  of  history, 
like  the  teaching  of  anything  else,  when  it  fails 
to  respect  moral  standards  is  dangerous  to  civili- 
zation and  fails  to  give  assurance  that  it  is  genu- 
ine history. 

Ill 

Language,  literature  and  history — the  three 
primary  humanities  in  education  and  the  source 
from  which  the  other  humanities  spring.  Science 
also,  using  their  light  as  a  help  in  teaching,  finds 
its  own  distinctive  truths  more  readily  understood 
and  exerts  fuller  moral  power  without  losing  a 
particle  of  its  scientific  integrity.  There  is  one 
more  of  the  humanities; — behind  them  all  and 


The  Humanities  After  the  War  69 

connecting  them  all,  the  study  Aristotle  called 
"the  only  liberal  science"* — philosophy.  Here 
again  the  war  has  opened  a  new  volume.  The 
divorce  of  thought  and  action,  and  the  cynical 
atheism  built  thereon,  we  may  now  hope  will  be 
regarded  not  only  as  immoral,  but  as  irrational. 
If  so,  philosophy  will  again  become  a  great  blend- 
ing power  in  our  university  studies. 

In  conclusion,  then,  does  not  the  war  teach 
clearly  that  education  in  the  humanities,  when 
true  to  its  own  type,  is  an  integral  part  of  the 
history  of  human  freedom?  Wherever  they  have 
been  mechanized,  their  spirit  has  been  cramped. 
The  classical  education  of  Germany  was  rigor- 
ously thorough.  Yet  it  often  missed  something 
which  enlightened  the  schools  of  France,  Great 
Britain  and  America.  That  something  is  what 
makes  the  difference  between  mechanical  preci- 
sion and  the  joy  of  Hfe.  A  plant  pressed  in 
a  herbarium  may  keep  its  outline,  but  it  will 
not  live.  The  indestructible  value  of  the  clas- 
sics for  American  schools  and  colleges  is  not  as 
science,  but  as  humanism. 

There  is  no  time  here  to  go  into  the  vital  ques- 
tion of  what  shall  guarantee  the  nobility  of  our 

*  Metaphysics,  I  2, 


70  The  War  and  Education 

teaching  by  making  primal  moral  truth  the  basis 
on  which  it  shall  rest.  Science  and  the  humani- 
ties and  philosophy,  truly  taught,  are  certain  to 
suggest  this  guarantee,  but  are  not  enough  to 
secure  it.  They  may  be  made  a  help  toward  vir- 
tue, but  they  are  not  virtue.  They  may  also  be 
misused  for  inhuman  ends.  Is  any  lesson  of  the 
war  clearer?  Will  democracy  of  itself  secure  it? 
It  may  help — but  will  it  help  enough?  There 
were  old  democracies,  sometimes  noble,  sometimes 
cruel  as  autocracies.  The  Athenian  treatment  of 
Melos  was  like  the  German  treatment  of  Bel- 
gium.^ And  what  of  Russian  democracy  now? 
Will  it  tame  the  wild  beast  in  man?  Will  voca- 
tional studies  suffice  to  save  us?  Some  seem  to 
think  so.  Yet  they  overlook  the  plain  fact  that 
to  send  our  youth  into  vocational  studies  alone 
is  to  cut  them  off  from  their  just  chance  for 
knowledge,  to  condemn  them  in  advance  to  indus- 
trial serfdom  and  to  create  a  huge  proletariat  of 
discontent.  Will  the  newer  psychology  help  us 
with  its  insistence  that  mental  discipline  is  ab- 
surd and  injurious  and  that  no  student  should 
have  to  study  a  subject  he  finds  "uninteresting"? 
Will  this  enfeebling  sentimental  theory  be  use- 
^Thucydides,  V  84-112. 


The  Humanities  After  the  War  71 

fill  in  the  moral  crises  of  life  "when  Duty 
whispers  low,  Thou  must"?  Will  money,  place 
and  power,  held  up  as  goals  of  education  and  con- 
sequent goals  of  social  endeavor,  help  us?  The 
war  has  wrecked  such  theories.  What  else  is 
left  but  the  Golden  Rule  of  Christ? 


VOCATIONAL  AND  GENERAL 
EDUCATION 


VOCATIONAL  AND  GENERAL 
EDUCATION 


As  war  is  an  abnormal  and  peace  the  normal 
condition  of  civilized  man,  the  end  of  the  world- 
war  brings  us  face  to  face  with  the  problem  of 
resmning  our  education  on  normal  lines  with  as 
much  added  wisdom  as  the  recent  experience  of 
war  has  given  us.  Whatever  was  really  true 
in  education  before  the  war,  whether  perceived 
fully  or  not,  is  true  now,  with  the  difference  that 
the  war,  notwithstanding  all  its  confusion,  has 
given  us  a  chance  to  perceive  truth  in  the  light  of 
new  experience.  We  should  therefore  pay  little 
heed  to  the  voices  of  confusion  telling  us  that 
everything  has  changed  and  that  nothing  in  edu- 
cation will  hereafter  be  the  same  as  before;  nor 
should  we  listen  to  the  voices  of  stolid  indifference 
telling  us  that  everything  in  education  will  be  the 
same  as  before. 

Neither  of  these  statements  can  be  trusted,  and 
it  is  our  task  to  find  out  clearly  and  promptly 
what  it  is  that  is  changing  and  what  is  not  chang- 

75 


76  The  War  arid  Education 

ing.  We  must  have  something  on  which  we  can 
depend  to  keep  our  vision  and  our  plans  clear 
and  steady.  Like  a  wise  pilot  in  an  aeroplane, 
we  shall  therefore  need  to  know  not  only  that  our 
machine  will  fly  but  that  it  is  safely  stabiHzed  for 
flight,  so  that  we  may  know  how  to  move  to  our 
objective  without  disaster  to  our  machine  or  our- 
selves. It  may  be  easier  to  fly  than  to  steer,  but 
just  now  steady  steering  is  more  needed  in  our 
education  than  is  enthusiastic  flying.  It  is  time 
for  cool  heads  and  trained  common  sense.  Other- 
wise the  confusion  around  us  will  bewilder  men 
and  make  them  lose  confidence  in  education. 
Spinoza  said  that  in  studying  any  problem  in 
order  to  get  at  the  truth  it  was  man's  duty  "not 
to  deplore  and  not  to  denounce,  but  to  under- 
stand,"— not  to  be  carried  away  by  emotional 
prejudices,  not  to  shed  heat  but  hght  on  any 
problem.  If  we  add  to  this  the  unshaken  purpose 
of  viewing  education  as  a  whole  and  also  in  the 
relation  of  its  parts  to  the  whole  and  to  each 
other,  it  then  becomes  possible  to  see  clearly  how 
our  entire  education  in  all  its  parts  may  be 
planned  on  the  best  basis  for  the  future. 

There  is  no  time  here  to  argue  in  detail  as  to 
what  things  are  changing  or  into  what  they  are 


Vocational  and  General  Education        77 

changing,  or  as  to  what  things  are  not  changing. 
We  may,  however  assert  with  some  confidence 
that  the  laws  of  nature  and  of  human  nature  re- 
main as  they  were  before  the  war.  The  war  has 
not  repealed  the  law  of  gravitation,  the  proces- 
sion of  the  seasons  or  the  continual  sequence  of 
day  and  night.  It  has  not  changed  the  law  of 
the  mind.  Yet  though  it  has  not  changed  our 
nature,  it  is  changing  our  attitude  from  one  of 
acquiescence  in  the  easy-going  view  of  life  into 
something  more  noble.  The  new  force  evoked  by 
the  war  is  the  newly  quickened  sense  of  discipline 
and  duty.  If  it  pervades  our  land,  it  will  save 
and  strengthen  our  education  for  centuries.  But 
many  men  have  short  memories  and  easily  forget 
what  we  supposed  they  had  learned.  The  war 
once  over,  it  is  to  many  something  to  be  forgotten 
as  soon  as  possible.  Therefore  the  new  impulse 
must  be  used  while  it  is  still  vivid,  if  it  is  to  be 
used  successfully  as  the  regenerating  force  for 
all  our  education  from  bottom  to  top.  It  should 
be  recognized  and  embodied  in  every  course  of 
study  and  in  every  act  of  teaching  and  learning. 
This  is  the  way  to  save  its  full  power  for  the 
future.  To  do  so  will  add  untold  gain  in  moral 
and  material  wealth  to  our  nation.    Not  to  do  so 


78  The  War  and  Education 

will  be  to  miss  the  greatest  chance  we  may  ever 
hope  to  have.  Never  before  has  so  heavy  a  bur- 
den of  responsibility  been  laid  on  those  in  charge 
of  our  education. 

II 

Our  education  follows  two  leading  aims  and 
therefore  has  two  main  divisions,  education  for 
knowledge  and  education  for  action.  The  first 
aims  primarily  to  train  the  individual  to  the  best 
intelligence.  The  second  aims  primarily  to 
train  the  individual  to  the  best  practice  of  his  oc- 
cupation. The  aim  of  the  first  is  universal,  and 
its  range  is  limited  only  by  the  capacity  of  the 
individual.  The  aim  of  the  second  is  particular, 
and  its  range  is  limited  both  by  the  capacity  of 
the  individual  and  the  character  of  his  intended 
occupation.  The  first  is  called  general  or,  in  its 
higher  levels,  liberal  education.  The  second  is 
called  vocational  or,  in  its  higher  levels,  technical 
or  professional  education.  Though  each  in  some 
degree  shares  in  the  aim  of  the  other,  the  primary 
aim  of  the  first  is  to  know  and  of  the  second 
is  to  do.  Each  is  necessary  to  the  welfare  of  the 
other,  and  both  are  therefore  necessary  in  our 
system  of  education. 


Vocational  and  General  Education        79 

The  general  education  has  its  three  successive 
levels, — primary,  secondary  and  higher,  and  the 
vocational  education  is  also  gradually  differenti- 
ating, with  some  overlappings,  into  three  succes- 
sive levels  of  vocational,  teclmical  and  profes- 
sional, which  as  yet  only  partly  correspond  to 
the  three  levels  of  general  education.  It  is  not 
to  be  expected  that  they  will  ever  closely  cor- 
respond with  and  emerge  from  the  three  levels  of 
general  education,  but  it  is  likely  that  they  will 
do  so  to  a  greater  extent  than  heretofore.  All 
these,  when  placed  in  rational  relation  to  each 
other,  form  a  complete,  harmonious,  mutually 
supporting  system  of  education,  to  which  all 
other  extraneous  forms  are  related  as  derivatives 
or  combinations.  It  is  only  when  their  true  re- 
lation is  disregarded  that  friction  and  consequent 
antagonism  arise.  To  organize  and  administer 
both  the  general  and  vocational  divisions  and 
main  subdivisions  in  their  true  relation  is  now 
the  largest  and  most  pressing  task  we  have  to 
perform.  Nothing  should  be  allowed  to  stand 
in  the  way  of  doing  it  promptly  and  thoroughly. 
The  interests  at  stake  are  priceless.  Delay  adds 
to  our  dangers.  Error  here  is  fundamental  and 
multiplies  itself  a  thousand  fold,  with  consequent 


80  The  War  and  Education 

waste  of  money,  friction  in  operation,  failure  in 
teaching  and  discouragement  in  learning. 

Ill 

Nine-tenths  of  our  boys  and  girls  must  start 
early  to  earn  their  living.  They  should  therefore 
have  the  opportunity  for  enough  vocational  train- 
ing to  prepare  them  for  their  purpose.  This,  it 
seems  to  me,  is  the  solid  truth  on  which  vocational 
training  rests.  It  would  be  foolish  to  deny  it. 
But,  like  some  other  truths,  it  is  not  all  the  truth. 
Nine-tenths  of  our  boys  and  girls,  yes,  ten-tenths, 
are  human  beings  with  minds  and  hearts  as  well 
as  hands.  Whenever  any  of  them  must  begin  to 
prepare  directly  to  earn  a  living,  they  should  have 
the  chance  for  good  vocational  training  of  course. 
Is  this  all  they  are  to  have?  Will  their  vocational 
training  be  injured  if  they  also  have  as  much 
good  general  education  as  they  have  the  chance  to 
take?  Will  it  not  rather  help  their  vocational 
studies?  In  fact,  will  not  many  of  them  do  bet- 
ter on  the  basis  of  general  education  alone?  Prac- 
tical results  seem  to  prove  this.  Just  as  surely  as 
general  knowledge  is  the  best  preparation  for 
acquiring  particular  knowledge  or  skill,  so  surely 
their  general  education,  even  though  scanty,  will 


Vocational  and  General  Education        81 

be  a  help  in  vocational  education  and  in  vocation- 
al labor.  Owing  to  our  present  imperfect  co- 
ordination of  the  two,  much  friction  arises.  But 
this  should  and  can  be  largely  remedied.  Mean- 
while we  may  rest  assured  that  good  general 
schooling  is  a  great  help  in  all  practical  studies. 

There  is  a  more  serious  aspect  of  the  question. 
If  nine-tenths  of  our  youth  are  to  get  nothing  or 
little  more  than  vocational  studies,  they  are  cut 
off  from  their  just  chance  for  as  much  general 
education  as  they  can  take,  and  are  thereby  largely 
cut  off  from  their  just  chance  to  rise  by  means  of 
the  help  this  broader  education  would  give  them. 
They  are  condemned  in  advance  to  industrial 
serfdom  and  are  on  the  way  to  form  a  huge  pro- 
letariat of  discontent,  the  gravest  menace  our 
democracy  can  encounter.  They  have  the  same 
right  to  a  square  deal  as  any  other  Americans, 
even  if  they  do  not  happen  to  have  the  same  abili- 
ties or  home  advantages.  Equal  educational  op- 
portunity for  all  who  can  take  it  is  their  right. 
To  do  anything  to  reduce  that  opportunity  is  to 
deprive  them  of  part  of  their  rights.  I  am  not 
a  socialist  and  yet  I  think  the  socialists  are  right 
in  their  demand  that  equality  of  provision  for  the 
best  general  education  should  be  available  for 


82  The  War  and  Education 

every  boy  and  girl  in  the  land  who  can  take  it,  and 
that  nothing  in  oui'  education  should  look  toward 
ecenomic  slavery.  Do  we  want  a  race  of  serfs 
and  peasants  in  our  land?  If  we  do,  a  sure  means 
to  this  end  is  to  reduce  the  chances  for  general 
education. 

The  greatest  peril  to  which  our  education  is 
now  exposed  is  the  progressive  reduction  and  de- 
terioration of  general  education,  the  birthright  of 
every  American  youth,  through  the  intolerant 
encroachment   of   so-called   "practical"    studies. 
The  demand  that  everyone  should  have  a  good 
chance  to  be  trained  to  make  a  living  is  just.    But 
so  long  as  "the  life  is  more  than  the  meat,"  so 
long  will  making  a  good  life  be  greater  than 
making  a  good  living.    Man  cannot  live  without 
bread,  but  "man  shall  not  live  by  bread  alone." 
Owing  to  our  strong  practical  instincts  and  the 
material  needs  of  our  life,  there  is  no  danger  that 
vocational  studies  of  all  grades,  from  elementary 
to  highest,  will  lack  support.     They  will  get  it. 
But  we  are  now  facing  the  disintegration  of  our 
general  education.    It  simply  cannot  live  if  it  is 
to  be  put  in  unrestrained  hostile  rivalry  with 
"practical"  studies.     Some  may  ask  whether  it  is 
worth  maintaining.    The  answer  is  very  easy.    It 


Vocational  and  General  Education        83 

is  supremely  worth  maintaining  because  it  is  es- 
sential to  general  intelligence,  because  it  is  the 
one  sure  guarantee  that  all  applied  or  practical 
studies  will  be  steadied  by  true  standards  of 
knowledge,  because  it  is  the  one  sure  means  of 
opening  the  way  of  highest  opportunity  to  all 
our  youth  who  can  make  the  journey,  and  be- 
cause it  is  the  best  practical  safeguard  of  our 
democratic  freedom.  It  is  always  harder  to 
save  the  invisible  than  the  visible  tilings ;  but  the 
invisible  things,  like  truth  and  freedom,  are  what 
make  human  life  worth  living.  What  greater 
duty,  then,  rests  upon  all  who  care  for  education 
than  to  end  the  antagonism  between  vocational 
and  general  education  by  placing  them  in  their 
true  and  beneficial  relation  of  mutual  support. 

These  remarks  indicate  some  of  the  perils  of 
severing  vocational  from  general  education.  If, 
then,  they  should  not  be  severed,  except  when  it 
is  necessary  to  begin  vocational  studies  in  order 
to  make  a  living,  how  ought  they  to  be  related? 
The  question  is  not  easy  to  answer  off-hand  nor 
in  brief  fashion.  Before  a  definitely  practical 
answer  can  be  given,  there  must  be  a  closer  agree- 
ment as  to  what  we  mean  by  vocational  and  gen- 
eral education  and  a  better  application  of  the 


84  The  War  and  Education 

agreement  in  practice.  There  is  not  yet  a  suffi- 
cient working  agreement,  so  far  as  I  am  aware, 
on  these  highly  important  points.  Nevertheless, 
some  points  are  clear ;  enough  to  make  plain  what 
these  two  types  of  education  ought  to  be  and 
may  become. 

First  of  all,  the  general  education,  because  of 
its  imiversality  of  aim  and  spirit  must  be  the  one 
and  only  foundation  for  all  our  education.  Take, 
for  example,  our  primary  schools.  Here  all  the 
youth  of  our  nation  receive  or  should  receive  their 
first  elements  of  general  knowledge, — our  na- 
tional language,  our  national  history  and  other 
studies.  The  secondary  and  higher  general  edu- 
cation should  rise  on  this  base  and  be  developed 
securely,  definitely  and  to  their  fullest  extent. 
Second,  the  vocational  education  should  always 
presuppose  as  much  general  education  as  will  not 
curtail  the  time  necessary  for  proper  vocational 
training.  In  the  same  way  the  technical  and 
professional  education  should  rest  on  a  still  more 
extensive  basis  of  general  education.  Thus,  in 
brief,  the  vocational  and  general  education  at 
every  stage  are  most  harmoniously  related  to  each 
other  when  the  vocational  training,  intended  for 
a  definite  particular  end  in  each  case,  emerges 


Vocational  and  General  Education        85 

from  and  rests  upon  as  large  an  amount  of  gen- 
eral education  as  is  practicable  to  obtain.  In  this 
way  the  general  precedes  and  prepares  for  the 
special  education  and  the  special  education 
emerges  from,  rests  on  and  benefits  by  the  gen- 
eral ability  developed  through  the  general  edu- 
cation. Each  thus  helps  the  other.  If  these 
considerations  are  sound,  it  is  clear  that  we  have 
a  great  deal  to  do  before  the  happy  result  can  be 
accomphshed.  Our  general  education  must  be 
rigorously  simplified  and  centered  in  the  few 
studies  which  experience  shows  are  of  most  fun- 
damental value  for  the  development  of  all-round 
intelligence.  The  students  in  school  and  college 
will  need  to  learn  that  there  is  no  education  for 
them  without  their  own  active  and  regular  exer- 
tion in  study.  The  newly  wakened  sense  of  dis- 
cipline and  duty  must  be  their  powerful  helper 
here,  as  it  must  be  for  all  of  us  who  teach.  Given 
a  simpler  course  of  general  education,  based  on 
a  few  required  fundamental  studies  well  and 
amply  taught,  as  well  as  diligently  studied,  the 
problem  of  our  general  education  is  solved.  It 
will  also  be  put  in  a  position  to  furnish  something 
more  definite  and  dependable  at  each  stage  as  a 
preparation  for  vocational,  technical  and  profes- 


86  The  War  and  Education 

sional  courses.  The  vocational  experts  must  set- 
tle what  actually  constitutes  good  vocational 
training  of  each  kind.  So  far  as  I  know,  a  com- 
mon agreement  has  not  yet  been  reached.  It  is 
imperative  that  such  an  agreement  should  be 
reached  and  reached  soon.  Of  one  thing  we  may 
be  sure,  namely,  that  unless  these  studies  are 
planned  so  as  to  allow  as  much  general  educa- 
tion as  is  practicable  and  to  arrange  vocational 
studies  so  that  they  emerge  from  general  educa- 
tion, instead  of  supplanting  it,  the  present  danger 
both  to  general  and  vocational  education  will 
increase. 

I  do  not  here  enter  into  such  important  ques- 
tions as  the  relation  of  the  workshop  to  the  school 
or  the  modes  of  vocational  teaching,  whether  from 
example  to  rule  or  from  rule  to  example,  or  on 
anything  else  of  vocational  technique.  But  I  do 
urge  on  all  friends  of  education  the  vital  impor- 
tance of  using  the  new-born  sense  of  discipHne 
and  duty  as  the  impulse  which  must  save  all  our 
schools  of  every  sort.  Why  listen  to  the  nonsense 
that  mental  disciphne  is  absurd  and  injurious?  I 
know  some  psychologists — not  all  psychologists 
— hold  that  we  know  nothing  of  the  mind  or  even 
know  that  we  have  a  mind,  and  that  all  we  know 


Vocational  and  General  Education       87 

is  "animal  behavior."  Even  if  this  were  so,  would 
it  not  be  well  that  we  animals  should  be  trained  to 
behave  as  well  as  possible?  And  why  listen  to 
the  nonsense  that  no  student  should  have  to  study 
any  subject  he  finds  "uninteresting"?  Here  the 
truth  that  every  study  should  be  so  taught  that 
the  student  shall  see  its  value  is  perverted  into  the 
untruth  that  no  study  should  be  taught  before  the 
student  sees  its  value.  The  answer  to  such  theo- 
ries is  written  in  the  world's  history.  The  undisci- 
plined mind  has  generally  been  beaten.  The  mas- 
ter key  to  success  in  studies,  general  or  vocational, 
as  to  success  in  life,  is  hard  work,  steady  work, 
honest  work,  intelligent  work. 

I  have  said  our  two-fold  division  of  education 
rests  on  training  for  knowledge  and  training  for 
action.  There  is  a  third  term  of  human  life  be- 
hind knowledge  and  action, — the  primal  impulse 
of  both.  Some  call  it  Feeling.  Some  call  it 
Heart.  If  we  once  get  hold  of  this  motive  in 
students  and  teachers,  we  shall  find  the  force 
which,  acting  with  friendliness,  consideration  and 
sympathy,  will  show  us  the  way  to  teach  any 
study  and  also  to  maintain  our  general  education 
in  its  full  integrity  and  to  miite  both  general 
and  vocational  education  in  one  mutually  sup- 
porting system. 


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■W^2w     education 


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